Gamers are always looking for the next level. A bigger sword, a more powerful gun, magic that turns your foes into globs of pink mush. But what about levelling up your gaming setup? A headset would always be my first call, and then maybe a pro controller or high end mouse, but what then?
Woojer have their own ideas on that, and they’ve been toting their haptic-infused devices for several years. While the Woojer Vest – now on its fourth generation – is the headline grabber, the Woojer Strap is the more accessible option, giving gamers and music lovers an extra layer of immersion by strapping a single device to your body, its haptics shocking, rumbling and thumping in time with the action.
Priced at £124 – with a healthy holiday season discount down to £95 – the Woojer Strap 4 is the latest iteration of the single-unit device. In the box, you’re getting the Woojer Strap 4 central unit, an elasticated strap to wrap around your body, a USB-C to USB-C charging cable, and a double-ended 3.5mm cable to physically connect your audio devices.
As gaming devices go, the Strap 4 is pretty straightforward. The unit itself has some weight to it and feels incredibly robust in your hand, crafted from solid plastic throughout, and available in a series of different colours. To the front, there’s a customisable LED ring with rubberised physical volume and intensity controls within it.
The top edge features the power button and Bluetooth pairing button, while the bottom includes a USB-C charging port and two 3.5mm audio sockets, one for input and the other as a dedicated output. I thought the older model’s copper finish looked great, but the addition of RGB allows the Strap 4 to match your gaming setup, and the extra layer of customisation gives you some individuality too. If you’re not an RGB fan? You can just turn it all off.
You’ll need a mobile device for the Strap 4 setup, and it proves pleasingly simple to connect the device to the Woojer app, where it takes you through pairing to your device, and then the secondary pairing of your headphones to the Strap 4. This all worked first time, which almost never happens, and you then find yourself with the main control page, which gives you an input and output display, as well as power remaining and the current latency setting, which you can alter if you find that the Strap 4’s haptic output doesn’t quite match up with whatever visuals you’re looking at.
Besides that, you can directly control the volume and the intensity, though there’s physical buttons for these as well, and, if needed, you can dive into the haptic sensation mode, which alters the behaviour of the haptics through Broad, Focused and Gaming settings.
The app also gives you decent control over the LED lights. There’s a full spectrum colour wheel to dial in the exact tone you want, adjust the brightness, and choose between a series of different effects to keep things interesting. While you’re playing, it’s not exactly something that adds all that much to the experience, but it’s certainly more futuristic, and if you’re out and about listening to music, you’ll certainly turn a few heads.
The Strap 4 experience is definitely easier to get into than the Woojer Vest. It’s small and portable, doesn’t take up much space, and requires minimal setup. You can just throw it on, and start watching, playing or listening to whatever you want, and I really liked how simple it felt. In turn, it immediately lifts your experience, with the added haptic feedback from your audio immersing you deeper in your content than ever before.
You can wear it in a variety of ways, though Woojer seem to recommend particular setups for particular input types, so for music you’d wear it around your waist, or horizontally while playing VR . Fundamentally, you can go for whatever feels best and most natural to you, and I gravitated most towards wearing it across my body, with the strap over one shoulder and the unit in the centre of my chest. This makes the haptic sensation fire directly into your chest, and explosions and heavy hits thump and rumble straight into you. Just like the rumble motors in a controller, it brings the action to life that bit further, and I find it hard to go back to playing without the extra layer it provides.
I loved using the Strap 4 for regular flat-screen gaming, listening to music and rewatching the most recent Star Trek movies, but VR is where it truly makes a major difference. With your senses cut off from the outside world, the rumble feels more nuanced and powerful, and whether you’re playing Beat Saber and throwing yourself directly into the music, or going for something more action-heavy like the new Deadpool VR, the Strap 4 brings a new level of immersion for a relatively low entry price.
While it can’t compare to the full experience you feel with the Woojer Vest, in terms of value for money, I think the Strap 4 hits the sweet spot between what it brings to your experience and the asking price. If you’ve already got a great headset, a pro controller, and a VR setup, the Strap 4 is practically a no-brainer as the next step in your gaming setup.
The only limitation, and this goes for all Woojer devices, is that this is a physical representation of audio output. That means your experience relies on how the audio is delivered, getting the levels right, and it will change on a game-by-game or song-by-song basis. It means there’s a certain degree of variation and inconsistency that some users might find disappointing, and hopefully Woojer can find a way to tap into the rumble and gamepad haptic signals in future. Once you’ve become accustomed to that abstraction, though, I still don’t think you’ll look back.