Retail Price: $49.99

Buy on Whirlwind FX

Though technology has come a long way, one thing we still struggle with is physical immersion in games. You can certainly be emotionally immersed as you play through the story and let your imagination run with the visuals in front of you, but there’s no way to feel like you’re physically in the game.

VR headsets bring us a bit closer as they allow us to use our own bodies to move our characters. However, VR still has limitations — it doesn’t work with all games and it misses a fundamental element of immersion: the environment.

What would it be like if you could feel the wind in your hair as your character flies through the sky? What if you could feel the heat of a zone covered in molten lava? Today’s review is about a product that attempts to give users more environmental immersion.

It’s called Vortx and is made by the company Whirlwind FX. It’s essentially a fan inside a small tower, but it also has a heater so that it can blow both hot and room temperature air at you. While the idea of the Vortx is cool, unfortunately, the execution of the product is not great. In fact, it is probably the most disappointing item I’ve reviewed for The Sypnotix to date.

What It Should Do vs What It Actually Does

This product can blow air on you at different intensities and different temperatures, though in terms of temperature it feels your options are varying levels of heat or just room temperature. I don’t believe it can actually deliver cooler air than what’s in your room as I don’t think it has the hardware for that, regardless of what the marketing says.

According to the product description, “Vortx analyzes the audio and video of your game to trigger physical effects.” So, if your screen is filled with the color red or you’re hearing loud explosions through your speakers, the Vortx is supposed to blow hot air on you. Marketing for this product from 2017 claims you can “feel wind, fire, and ice.”

The problem is, you don’t. My experience with the Vortx is mostly just waiting to have air blown on me because it hardly ever does anything. And if I do get a puff of air blown at me, it’s sporadic and doesn’t make a lot of sense for what’s actually happening in the game. I’ve tested this product with the games I play, which are mainly Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV) and Genshin Impact. My experience with the Vortx was slightly different in each game, but still disappointing overall because of the problems I just mentioned.

FFXIV

While playing FFXIV, the Vortx does almost nothing. Especially if I am playing open-world content. The only time it ever blows air on me is if I am in a raid that has a loud effect, such as an explosion from a boss attack. Even then, the amount of air blown is quite pitiful. When I first got this, I thought it would read the colors on my screen and blow air accordingly, so I went to a place in the game called Hell's Lid where there is molten lava. Nothing happened. Flying doesn’t trigger any effects. Rain doesn’t trigger any effects. I can go to areas in the game covered in snow and the Vortx doesn’t blow any air on me at all. It’d be so cool if it would blow cool air on me, but it doesn’t. It really does almost nothing.

Genshin Impact

The Vortx works a smidge better with Genshin Impact, but not by much. Whether fighting mobs in the open world or facing a boss, I only ever got sporadic waves of air from the Vortx, and most of the time they didn’t even make sense. The reason I say that is because I don’t feel like I would be experiencing big gusts of air while fighting monsters. The Vortx never blows air at times where it might actually be appropriate. For instance, if I use one of the air attacks where you left click to smash the ground from the sky, I do not feel any air from the Vortx despite the fact that my character is literally barreling down from the sky at a high speed and punching the ground with great force. Similarly, I’ll feel heat but I’m not necessarily able to say “I feel heat because I used a pyro (fire) skill.” It’s just randomly there. I thought it’d be pretty cool if the Vortx blew a gentle current of air on me whenever I’m using my glider to fly, but instead it does nothing. Overall, it just feels really inconsistent and whenever it does bother to blow some air on me, it never adds to my immersion.

Not Plug-and-Play: You Need SignalRGB

The product description on Whirlwind’s website claims that the Vortx is plug-and-play. This is simply not true. I spent a good hour playing games without installing any software, and absolutely nothing happened. Once I installed the companion software, SignalRGB, I had some results. I was a little confused though because inside the packaging, there was a sheet that told me to install some other software which I can only guess was the previous version of SignalRGB. The problem is, it had a completely different name and no longer existed. I don’t get why Whirlwind didn’t update the papers or instructions inside the box.

While it may not seem like that big of a deal that the Vortx isn’t plug-and-play, it kind of is. And here’s why. SignalRGB is a heavy load on your CPU. The highest number I saw in task manager was 28% but on average it used about 20% of my CPU. I use an Intel i5 8400. It’s not the newest of CPUs but it gets the job done and then some for everything I need to do with my PC. Regardless, I think this is far too heavy of a load on your CPU for something that is essentially a peripheral.

Game Integrations

Speaking of SignalRGB, there is a paid version with game integrations, and wouldn’t you know, FFXIV and Genshin Impact were both available for game integration! So we gave Whirlwind five more dollars to see what those did. And the answer is not much. We were hoping the game integration would make the gusts of air coming out of the device more accurate, but all the integration really does is give you more RGB settings to play with. The RGB settings for FFXIV were pretty bad, to be honest. There was nothing special about them and they barely ever changed. The settings for Genshin were admittedly cooler, with the device changing color to red every time you swapped to a pyro-aspected (fire-aspected) character or gold whenever you used a geo-aspected (earth-aspected) character.

Device Integration

SignalRGB also allows you to control all your devices within its interface and sync them to show the same RGB effects. While this can be pretty cool, it isn’t without drawbacks. You’re best off if you choose one of the presets, such as the game integrations. This is because editing the colors on your keyboard via SignalRGB is not user-friendly. Most software for this will allow you to select large parts of the keyboard, but you can’t do that with SignalRGB. You have to pick out each key one by one. The game integrations and free presets do have fancy keyboard effects, though, which is why it’s better to just pick a preset you like and leave it like that. Another huge issue is that my Corsair keyboard’s volume wheel stopped functioning whenever I let SignalRGB control it. If you know me you know I love my volume wheel, so I’d rather let iCue control my keyboard.

It Can Also Be a Loud Mini Space Heater

I know I’ve already said a lot of negative things about this product, but there are a few more things I think prospective customers should know. First of all, the fan is really loud. It’s noisy enough that you’d actually be better off playing your games with headphones just so you don’t have to listen to the fan’s noise.

It also kind of smells. It’s at its worst when you first turn it on and use the heat setting. It has a very concerning smell, like something is burning. Luckily, this does subside a bit after time but I feel like it never completely goes away.

One good thing about this product is it’s nice to use if you’re cold. I’ve actually used it a few times to warm me up. You’re supposed to be able to adjust the heat intensity, but I personally didn’t notice a difference when it was at its highest setting versus its lowest setting. Instead, adjusting the intensity of the fan itself worked better. If I was too hot, I just made the fan speed weaker and vice versa. Still, if you really wanted a space heater you’d be better off just purchasing a space heater as this is equivalent to a hair blow dryer and couldn’t actually heat a room.

Final Thoughts

The idea of the Vortx is certainly a cool one, but unfortunately, the product itself just doesn’t deliver. It does not seem to blow air often enough or at times where it would make sense to feel a blast of wind. It’s a nice product if you want a desk-sized space heater to blow hot air on you, but the fan is quite loud. The RGB colors are pretty, but syncing them up with your other devices can sometimes cause malfunctions for those devices. Overall, the Vortx still needs a lot of work put into it before it can truly be an environmental simulator for games and, in my opinion, is currently not worth your money.

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Seri

A writer by day and gamer by night, Seri’s most prized possession is her computer. In fact, she built her desktop PC herself and repaired her college laptop with nothing but Google, Reddit, and determination to guide her. This do-it-yourself attitude was born from frugalness, so if you see Seri raving about something, it’s probably worth the price.