 Gaming headsets, with some notable exceptions, including the SteelSeries H Wireless, Corsair Vengeance 2100, and Audio-Technica A-T-H-A-G1, to name a few, are terrible. Truly, they're so bad that usually when a manufacturer calls me up and is like, OMG Linus, we have this awesome new gaming headset. Do you wanna review it? I'm like, yeah, sure. Send it over if you want me to whip it out on camera and shake it around a little bit until we're both feeling tired and a little bit ashamed. Which is basically what I told Kingston when they asked me to review the HyperX Cloud when I dropped by their booth at PAX. At least put them on your head, they pleaded, in an attempt to make me reconsider. I made some kind of half-hearted thread about lawsuits and headlights from sharing headphones. I mean, I was only half joking because the worst PAX attendees are about as well-groomed as a typical homeless person. I begrudgingly put them on and I was stunned by how much sound their closed design was able to block on the busy show floor. And by how amazingly comfortable and light they felt on my head. I said so and my Kingston contact knew this moment of weakness was his opportunity to attack. Then with the precision and strength of an adolescent giraffe who was a little big for his age, he followed up and said, the mic's removable, they've got great sounding 53 millimeter drivers and they're only a hundred bucks. Unable to hold my own against his feverish onslaught of product salesmanship, I gave in and said, okay, send me a pair and I'll review them. I've spent some time with them and I gotta say, they deserve more than a review. They deserve the STDs treatment. Welcome to episode number two of Stuff That Doesn't Suck, featuring the HyperX Cloud gaming headset. D-Skill's new Ripjaws 4 series is their ultimate DDR4 memory with speeds of up to 3,333 megahertz available. Click now to learn more. It starts with the unboxing experience and I'm already impressed at this point. You get a padded mesh carry bag, a braided dual three and a half millimeter extension with inline volume and mute controls, an additional dual three and a half millimeter extension, just in case you wanna go make food while you listen to music, but you don't feel like investing in a wireless headset, an airplane adapter, a four pole three and a half millimeter adapter for mobile devices and ultrabooks, a detachable boom mic, alternate memory foam ear pads with velour covering in case you don't like the genuine leather ones that come pre-installed, and finally, the headset itself, which I'll start with by repeating myself, real leather! What a fantastic inclusion, because you know what? What did cows ever do for me anyway? The comfort of my ears is much more important to me than cows and it gets better. You also get a sexy, surprisingly durable matte plastic construction accented by this gorgeous fingerprint resistant brushed aluminum finish on the ear cups and the size adjustment mechanism that goes up into the headband, which features a tasteful embroidered HyperX logo. But Linus, lots of gaming headsets look good, and very few of them sound like anything but a muddled bass heavy mess. What about these ones? Not the case. I mean, yes, they are a little bit Beats Generation tuned. That is to say, there is some extra emphasis on the bass and mids are a bit underpowered, but unlike the Kraken Forge, for example, that I wanted so badly to like, because they looked and felt so sexy, the Clouds managed to keep the aforementioned bass punchy and tight enough that it doesn't overwhelm everything else. Throughout my testing, the Clouds stayed fantastically comfortable and delivered a great listening experience in my usual mix of Top 40 and Titanfall game streams that I use to evaluate gaming headphones. I was absolutely blown away by how much I enjoyed reviewing the HyperX Clouds. The mic delivered a solid performance as well. So here's the mic test. I got him, I got him. Great kid, don't get cocky. Thanks grandma, I'm sure Flopsy is feeling much better now. Yeah, the wife and kids are sleeping. Finally time to game a bit. So no, it isn't on par with the Audio Technicas that I reviewed earlier this year with some noticeable tininess to the sound, but frankly not much is, and these only cost a third as much. But since they don't have any weird, you know, wing style, headband design things going on, and I find them much more comfortable, I gotta give again, kudos to the Clouds. Now, obviously Kingston doesn't actually manufacture headphones in the same way Corsair obviously doesn't manufacture, well, anything. So by this point, I was curious who, with some of Kingston's input presumably, had actually built this miracle product. I didn't have to look far. The detachable mic cover says Q-pad on it, and so does the box for that matter, interesting. And not a bad thing at all. Q-pad is very well regarded as a maker of value-centric headphones and headsets. Looks like Kingston made a great choice. And great choice is pretty much the video summary here. They aren't perfect. I worry a little bit about the long-term robustness of the internals of the size adjust mechanism, but especially at the actually lower than $100, $80 price that they're on at Amazon for at the time of filming, they are an absolute no-brainer. Go buy this headset if you need a new gaming headset. Guys, thanks for watching this episode of Stuff That Doesn't Suck. Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, leave a comment letting me know if your feelings are much more complicated than this, and check out the link in the video description to how to support us. You can buy a cool t-shirt like this one, you can give us a monthly contribution, or you can change your Amazon bookmark. Let's say you're gonna go buy this headset, go change your bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small kickback whenever you buy stuff. It helps us out a lot. Thanks again for watching, and as always, don't forget to subscribe. kommt back via Patreon!