If you’ve ever wished you could possibly put on your gaming headset out and about with out wanting like a strolling, speaking RGB Christmas tree, then you definitely would possibly wish to flip your consideration to the HyperX Cloud Mix. Indoors, it connects to your PC through its two-pronged 3.5mm adapter; outdoor, its Bluetooth 4.2 assist means you can even take heed to stuff and take calls in your telephone or different such Bluetooth-enabled gadget. It’s additionally decidedly freed from any blinking lights or garish colors save two massive, however semi-tasteful silver HyperX logos on every ear cup, and its flexible microphone could be popped on or off at will, preserving issues good and streamlined for while you enterprise exterior. But is it price plonking down £180 / $170 on it? Here’s wot I believe.
Design-wise, the Cloud Mix is definitely similar to HyperX’s Cloud Alpha. It doesn’t include the Alpha’s beautiful purple trim sadly, however its massive, 40mm audio drivers share the identical twin chamber building that’s meant to assist separate out the bass from the highs and mids. I used to be a giant fan of this on the Alpha, and I hoped the Mix would produce the identical wealthy, detailed soundscape in consequence.
Alas, the Mix clearly isn’t destined for best gaming headset greatness, because it was significantly muddier than the Alpha after I put it via my gaming check suite. In Doom, as an illustration, Super Shotgun pictures landed with a uninteresting thud in most enemy skulls, and the scrumptious squishes and squelches of its juicy finisher strikes merely plopped moderately than dripped with tinkling element. Its wider, heavy metallic battle music sounded all proper, however on the entire every encounter felt distinctly unsatisfying to play, which is not what you need in a game like Doom.
Annoyingly, the Cloud Mix’s quantity management solely works while you’re utilizing the headset over Bluetooth.
The opening sequence of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice fared just a little higher, however even right here the voices inside Senua’s head sounded a bit bland. All of its 360-degree binaural audio labored completely advantageous, and there was an excellent stability between the rumbling thunder and the splash of Senua’s oars on the river. But whereas some headsets have made my backbone tingle listening to the opening narration, the Mix left me chilly. It produced a good sufficient sound on the entire, however nothing significantly particular.
The similar went for Final Fantasy XV. For essentially the most half, the game’s soundtrack was completely serviceable. The bass didn’t overwhelm the zips and zaps of Noctis’ teleport slashes and its orchestral backing music sounded beautiful and balanced. On additional listening, nonetheless, smaller seems like chocobo warks and water splashes typically obtained misplaced within the fray, coming throughout a lot quieter than all the things else. Again, ‘fine’ might be the phrase I’d use to explain the Cloud Mix general, however I don’t assume ‘fine’ is admittedly adequate for a £180 / $170 headset.
Fortunately, you do get a pleasant quantity management and microphone mute button for while you’re utilizing it as a wired headset.
It didn’t get a lot better after I tried utilizing the Cloud Mix as an peculiar listening headset, both – each as a wired headset and over Bluetooth. Switching over to my Final Fantasy XV soundtrack in iTunes, the strings sounded very muddy and muted in comparison with different headsets I’ve tried up to now, together with the Cloud Alpha, and numerous the finer percussion element simply wasn’t as clear as I’d like.
Thankfully, rock and pop tracks weren’t fairly as dire, with the Mix producing a good quantity of bass to stability out the vocals in almost each check monitor. Just like Hellblade, nonetheless, one thing was lacking. It’s arduous to explain, however each little bit of music simply felt like one large shoulder shrug. There was no depth to them, no toe-tapping element, nothing to immediately make me go, ‘oh yeah, that’s the stuff.’ Nadda.
It’s a disgrace, because the removable microphone was actually fairly glorious. Everything was crystal clear after I recorded myself speaking in Audacity, with nary a touch of wind pop or hissing static.
It’s additionally probably the most comfy HyperX headsets I’ve worn thus far, its smooth, plush reminiscence foam headband sitting very agreeably upon my tiny noggin for hours at a time. I’ve had blended outcomes with different HyperX headsets up to now – the Cloud Alpha was nearly all proper for a few hours, however I didn’t actually get on with the Cloud Flight‘s headband at all – so it’s good to see issues are getting higher on this respect with every subsequent headset HyperX put out.
The Cloud Mix’s Bluetooth battery lifetime of as much as 20 hours can be fairly first rate as this stuff go, however it nonetheless can’t beat HyperX’s correct wi-fi headset, the aforementioned Cloud Flight, which lasts for as much as 30 hours with all of its LEDs turned off.
I actually needed to love the HyperX Cloud Mix, however when it prices a lot greater than nearly some other gaming headset on the market, its audio high quality merely isn’t adequate to advocate it over HyperX’s infinitely better-sounding Cloud Alpha or, certainly, Cloud Flight. While the Bluetooth assist will little doubt be helpful to some, you’re paying an terrible large premium for it over your conventional wi-fi headsets that use a USB dongle, which let’s not neglect are nonetheless absolutely appropriate along with your laptop computer while you’re on the go.
If you’re actually useless set about having one thing to make use of along with your telephone in addition to your laptop computer then I’d must advocate the £94 / $100 Steelseries Arctis 3 Bluetooth as an alternative, as that has the identical nice audio drivers as my present best gaming headset champ, the Steelseries Arctis 7, and has a superior 28 hour battery life besides. Otherwise, these merely after a glorious wired headset ought to make their method over to the £85 / $80 Corsair Void Pro RGB.
