HyperX makes some of the most comfortable gaming headsets you can pop on your head, and now the company has taken the tether away from its most popular model, the $100 Cloud 2. The $150 Cloud 2 Wireless is essentially the same — virtual 7.1 surround, great sound powered by 53mm drivers, removable noise-canceling mic — but with the required wireless controls and a couple cosmetic differences. Its 2-plus-inch dongle lets you use it on a PC/Mac or PS4.
The company rates its battery life at up to 30 hours — with intermittent use it’s lasted me days on a single charge. It’s quite lightweight at 10.6 oz/300g (10.9 oz/309g with the mic attached), so if you do wear it for long sessions it won’t weigh you down. It charges via USB-C, which is relatively rare for wireless gaming headsets. It stayed connected through walls and about 55 ft/16.8M (HyperX rates it at up to 20 meters): I ran out of apartment before I ran out of signal, with no mic dropout.
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There are only a few controls: a volume dial on the right earcup and power and mic mute buttons on the left. The latter do double duty: tap the power button to toggle 7.1 surround mode and hold the mute button for a few seconds to toggle mic monitoring. The two buttons feel different for easy groping — power is concave and mute is convex — but the power button is a bit difficult to maneuver and holding down mute to enable sidetone accidentally muted the mic on more than one occasion. A red ring on the mic indicates it’s muted, but I found it too far in my peripheral vision, at with glasses, to quickly spot it.
The power button is a bit too flush with the surface, making it a little difficult to turn on and off.
Lori Grunin/CNET
As much as I love the headset, it seems a bit basic for the money compared with models like the SteelSeries Arctis 7X; the company’s Ngenuity utility, which is in beta, doesn’t let you change equalizer settings, mic recording or sidetone (mic monitoring) volume, disable noise cancelling, change game/chat balance or any other features usually available for the money. And it doesn’t work wired.
You can hear the outside world while wearing the headset, but it’s fairly muffled — a good compromise. Because you can’t turn off the noise canceling on the mic it has that compressed tonality that makes most noise cancellation sound a little tinny. But it’s perfectly fine for meetings and in-game chat with no pickup problems. And I have no complaints about the gaming sound quality or volume.
It’s a good headset, but it will be much more likeable when it’s discounted a little.
