Walkers Razor Slim Electronic Hearing Protection
Electronic hearing protection runs the gamut price range-wise. You can find a good set of earmuffs priced anywhere from tens of dollars to several hundred dollars. This massive price difference makes it intimidating at times. Many cheap things in the gun world often suck, so how does ear protection do? Well, today, it’s all about saving money, and we are doing so with the Walkers Razor Slim ear muffs.
These cheap headphones cost around fifty bucks, so they land squarely in that budget category for earmuffs. With that said, are they worth a damn? Protecting your hearing is pretty dang important, so it’s worth saving some bucks over. Let’s dive into it.
The Importance of Electronic Hearing Protection
The Walker’s Razor Slim earmuffs provide budget-grade electronic hearing protection. You might be thinking that a set of normal, non-electronic earmuffs are even cheaper. True, but electronic hearing protection can be an invaluable tool.
Electric ear protection allows you to maintain a high level of situational awareness. That’s inherently valuable when it comes to dealing with firearms. Being able to hear range commands, ceasefires, and more isn’t just a convenience but a potential lifesaver in a bad situation.
If you take classes, you are paying for an instructor to teach. Teaching involves speaking, and if you are paying an instructor to teach, you better be able to hear what they have to say. A set of electronic ear protection allows you to hear commands, instructions, and more on the fly when a half dozen other students are shooting around you.
Electronic hearing protection also makes you a better competitive shooter. Again, you are dealing with range commands, matches working on strict timelines, and your ability to win depends on your ability to hear that BEEP.
If you plan to be a hardcore, dedicated shooter, then electronic hearing protection only makes sense. Does that mean you need to spend a few hundred bucks to get electronic hearing protection? No. The Walkers Razor Slim earmuffs are a low-cost option for electronic hearing protection.
Breaking Down the Walker’s Razor Slim Muffs
These have a muff design that fully encompasses your ears and provides a high level of hearing protection to the individual user. Muffs beat plugs on the protection rating, but earplugs typically beat muff comfort-wise.
The Walker’s Razor Slim ear muffs do provide a noise reduction rating of 23 decibels. That greatly lowers the sound of gunfire to a hearing-safe level for the vast majority of firearms. Admittedly, if you take a .308 caliber pistol with a muzzle brake to the range, you might want to double up. For everything else, the Walker’s will provide a high level of protection to keep your ears from gaining that loud, high-pitched ring that causes you to require a fan for white noise so you can sleep at night.
The Walker’s Razor earmuffs have a single control. It’s a knob that both turns the earmuffs on and adjusts the volume as necessary. You do get a 3.5mm audio jack that allows you to plug into an external audio device, but that does kill some of your attention span and adds a second layer of volume control to your earmuffs.
The Comfort Level
Earmuffs tend to be less comfy than earplugs, but the Walker’s Razor muffs aren’t exactly a pain in the head. A set of padded cups— well, they cup your ear and are a very comfy set of muffs. They encompass your ear entirely, and a soft polymer coats the outside of the muffs. This polymer coating provides a level of protection to the earmuffs.
This prevents water absorption and generally gives the muff part a much longer lifespan. The cups are thick, well-padded, and provide a high level of comfort and the heavily padded headband is surprisingly comfortable and doesn’t rub my head raw.
I got a big head, guys, and guess what? A lot of muffs pinch my head. These don’t. For my fellow big-headed kings, the Walker’s Razor earmuffs give us a pinch-free experience.
Wear and Use
The slim nature of the Razor earmuffs makes them a fair bit more comfortable when using a rifle stock. You can rest your head against the stock and get a decent cheek weld when firing and handling a rifle. It’s not perfect, and plugs will get you tighter on the stock, but it’s better than a lot of other earmuffs I’ve used in the past.
They do provide excellent protection, even at indoor ranges. I’ve never walked away with ringing ears, even after using rifles indoors. At SHOT, one year, we were handling a lot of binary trigger-equipped rifles inside a small range, and I didn’t so much as develop a flinch.
As electronic ear muffs, the Razor Slims have a set of mics that allow you to hear external audio. If a noise reaches above a certain threshold, the device will automatically shut the noise off. It’s faster than we can perceive and occurs within .02 of a second.
The budget nature of the Walker’s Razor slims does mean you don’t get the best audio quality. Don’t get me wrong. Everything is audible and understandable. I have no problems hearing people speaking, talking, taking instruction from a tower, and whatever else comes my way. However, I’ve experienced clearer audio with other electronic hearing protection. Keep in mind those muffs cost at least as twice as much as the Walker’s Razor muffs.
Hearing Around
The mics in the Walkers Razor Slim earmuffs are omnidirectional. This does help you find the source of the noise in most cases. Omnidirectional can only go so far, but it’s better than the old school earmuffs with a single mic and surprising for a budget friend set of electronic earmuffs.
The Walker’s Razor slim earmuffs work wonderfully for the price point. These kinds of muffs have two jobs. First, to protect your hearing. Second, to provide you with enhanced situational awareness. On those two fronts, the Walker’s Razor Slim earmuffs excel. On top of that, they provide a surprising level of comfort at the same time.
Color me impressed. Actually, I was impressed enough to purchase two pairs. They serve as my backup earmuffs and my spares when I take friends and family shooting. For the price point, they offer you an entry-level set of earmuffs that are well worth the investment, in both your ears and situational awareness.
