#Good Until You Plug the Mic In – Review Geek

The HyperX Cloud II has been a reigning king in the world of sub-$100 gaming headsets. The comfortable build, solid sound quality, and impressive microphone made it a favorite of many and now HyperX aims to improve on its best-selling headset with a wireless version.

This headset boasts 7.1 virtual surround sound and 30 hours of battery life, and that combination does sound pretty great. But the price of the wireless Cloud II is significantly more than the wired version at $149.99, so let’s see if it can still make the same waves as the wired version when it releases on November 10th.

Comfy Frame, Simple Connection

The wireless Cloud II uses the same build as the standard wired version, but that’s nothing to complain about. Everything feels comfortable while remaining sturdy and durable. The earcups and headband are padded with a thick material that feels great and curves to your head well. But while the material is comfortable, it’s certainly not breathable. In extended sessions of using the headset, I definitely started getting uncomfortable due to the heat inside the earcups. It’s not terrible, and if you don’t tend to wear headsets for long periods of time you’ll be fine, but it does spoil the headphones otherwise great design.

Eric Schoon

As far as looks go, this is definitely a gaming headset. The bright red highlights and HyperX logo are a bit much for my liking, but it’s definitely not as over-the-top as a lot of other gaming headsets.

And underneath that bright red HyperX logo, you’ll find some more useful stuff as well. On the left earcup, there’s a volume dial and on the right (alongside a USB-C charging port and power button) is a mute mic button. Useful stuff to have on hand for sure, and the microphone even features an LED light to indicate when it’s muted.

When it comes time to actually connecting the Cloud II, all you need to do is plug in the included adapter and turn on the headset (same for both PC and consoles). Pretty simple, but I will note now that I had what I can only assume are connection issues while using the headset. The sound would randomly become more grainy or cut out in strange ways. This only happened one time during my time of using the headset, so it might be a fluke but definitely a fluke worth noting.

Solid Sound Going In…

But enough about build quality and volume dials, while that’s important, it’s not as important as the sound quality. And the Cloud II does sound good, not only while playing games but general media consumption as well. While it’s unlikely to blow you away, for most people this is more than serviceable as a general pair of headphones.

But when you turn to the gaming sides of things, HyperX did have a trick up its sleeve to make this headset even better—7.1 virtual surround sound. Virtual surround sound isn’t a rare feature on gaming headsets, but it’s appreciated all the same, and the Cloud II’s certainly impresses. I mainly used Star Wars: Squadrons to test this out and enabling surround sound definitely immerses you into the action even more.

Of course, how useful this is going to be will depend on the games you play, but if you play any form of competitive PVP or highly immersive games, this is sure to be a treat (assuming the games you play properly support surround sound). To enable surround sound, you need to open and install HyperX NGenunity.

This headset is unfortunately limited when it comes to settings with the only options in the software being basic volume controls, enabling the surround sound, and enabling mic monitoring—there are no options to tune your audio in any way.

But Bad Going Out

The removable microphone on the Cloud II is an unfortunate weak spot of the headset. While it’s not unbearable to listen to, it’s definitely not great. It’s serviceable enough for a quick voice call, but if you’re hoping for high-quality audio, then you’re not gonna find it here. This was a pretty big disappointment for me, as I’ve definitely heard better from other headsets in the price range—both wired and wireless—and even the wired version of the Cloud II sounds better so I’m not sure what went wrong here.

At the very least, HyperX does include a removable pop filter for the microphone, which helps filter out plosives and makes the microphone sound clearer.

Conclusion

The HyperX Cloud II wireless is a comfortable pair of headphones that sound pretty good, but the second you plug in that microphone is when the problems become apparent. A subpar microphone is a death knell to a headset at this price, because if the microphone is bad, then what’s the point using it compared to a standard pair of headphones. After all, you’d definitely get better audio quality out of a dedicated pair of headphones for less than this headset.

It’s for that reason I find the Cloud II wireless a difficult headset to recommend. If you can find it discounted and just want to use it as a standard pair of wireless headphones it works well enough for that, but if you’re looking for a proper headset, then you should look elsewhere.