WEBVTT 00:00:00.680 --> 00:00:04.080 The HyperX Cloud 2s have been a go-to recommendation 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:07.760 for us for a long time. Why? Because they're reasonably priced 00:00:07.760 --> 00:00:12.000 and they sound pretty good, at least in the realm of gaming headsets. 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:15.520 Now, they're doing a very iterative update 00:00:15.520 --> 00:00:19.480 to the HyperX Cloud 3s. Before we take a look at these, 00:00:19.480 --> 00:00:23.560 we will take a look at what's in the box. What's in the box? 00:00:23.560 --> 00:00:29.160 What's in the box? Well, what's on the box? Signature comfort, legendary sound. 00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:33.800 We have DTS-X. It's like Dolby Atmos. It's a surround sound solution, 00:00:33.800 --> 00:00:39.160 but it's cheaper to license and in some ways is a better technology. 00:00:39.160 --> 00:00:43.920 It's got memory foam. It's got durable metal. It's got angled 53 millimeter drivers 00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:47.940 and it has an ultra clear microphone, which is very important for gaming. 00:00:47.940 --> 00:00:51.520 When you got to talk to your friends and make sure that they hear you. Oh, okay. 00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:54.720 One thing to note, the DTS headphone X spatial audio 00:00:54.720 --> 00:00:58.280 is only available on PC, probably because it will be enabled 00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:01.920 through their software suite rather than on the headphone themselves. 00:01:01.920 --> 00:01:05.440 We got the headphones out of the box already and then we got a box in here. 00:01:05.440 --> 00:01:10.060 What's another box? We have our boom microphone ARM 00:01:10.060 --> 00:01:15.000 and our USB dongle. A nice braided cable, pretty soft. 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:17.660 It's a five foot cable, but it is a, oh wow, look at that. 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:22.800 Oh, that's in there. It's a five foot USB-C to three and a half millimeter 00:01:22.800 --> 00:01:25.920 headphone adapter and they conveniently include 00:01:25.960 --> 00:01:29.400 this little guy. And that's about it. 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:34.480 That's all of the stuff that you get. On the headphones themselves, we have another like a five foot braided cable. 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:38.120 Sadly, it's non-removable, which is a big bummer. It just sucks. 00:01:38.120 --> 00:01:42.640 Why did, why make this adapter when you could just make two cables that plug into here? 00:01:42.640 --> 00:01:45.800 It's nice to be able to replace cables as they often are some of the first things to go 00:01:45.800 --> 00:01:49.680 on a headset that you'll have for a long time. Hopefully you'll have these for a long time. 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:54.440 The left of your cup, we have the input for your microphone, a mute switch on the back. 00:01:54.480 --> 00:01:59.240 And on the right ear cup, we have a volume knob. I'm not sure if that's going to control your system volume 00:01:59.240 --> 00:02:04.780 or if it will have any other features. It doesn't even press in. That's very simple, very basic. 00:02:04.780 --> 00:02:08.340 The headband is made of that memory foam that they mentioned on the front. 00:02:08.340 --> 00:02:13.580 And the ear cups also have memory foam. And we have a full metal headband, 00:02:13.580 --> 00:02:18.040 as well as these metal arms on the edge that will keep everything nice and sturdy. 00:02:18.040 --> 00:02:22.120 Seems pretty durable, perhaps a little weak there. 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:27.100 It's a nice pleather texture on here. It is very much still faux leather. 00:02:27.980 --> 00:02:32.580 Are the ear cups removable? And yes, they are, which is great. There are companies that produce third party ear cups 00:02:32.580 --> 00:02:36.660 so you can replace them if you don't like these ones or if you want maybe a slightly different sound. 00:02:36.660 --> 00:02:41.300 And on the inside, we see all of their trade markings 00:02:41.300 --> 00:02:46.220 and stuff like that. And we can see the drivers themselves. And they're really just, the drivers really just exposed. 00:02:46.220 --> 00:02:49.380 We got 53 millimeter neodymium drivers. 00:02:49.380 --> 00:02:53.300 Pretty typical for this kind of product segment. These, as you may have noticed, 00:02:53.340 --> 00:02:57.260 since the cable is not removable, are not wireless headphones, which is totally fine. 00:02:57.260 --> 00:03:01.340 This is a budget kind of category. And they're pretty squarely focused on being for gaming 00:03:01.340 --> 00:03:07.260 at home rather than on the go. The ear cups, they have a tilt 00:03:07.260 --> 00:03:09.780 and a very, very slight amount of swivel 00:03:10.980 --> 00:03:14.860 to ups and the downs. It's tough to say if they're super comfortable 00:03:14.860 --> 00:03:18.160 because I haven't had a chance to wear them for a long time. Now, I don't have a huge head, 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:21.740 but I also don't have a small head. I'm upper medium. 00:03:21.820 --> 00:03:27.060 I'm like, within one standard deviation of the mean, but like near that standard deviation. 00:03:27.060 --> 00:03:30.700 Many headsets, when they're fully extended, I can't comfortably wear. They're too loose. 00:03:30.700 --> 00:03:34.340 If you have a larger head, you might have to look elsewhere. In terms of comfort around the ear cups, 00:03:34.340 --> 00:03:37.820 well, I think that they're probably gonna be a little warm because it's memory foam and pleather. 00:03:37.820 --> 00:03:43.980 There's enough space for my ears, though they're not absolutely massive ear cups. 00:03:43.980 --> 00:03:47.900 So if you have bigger ears or ears that stick out pretty far, 00:03:47.900 --> 00:03:52.180 they're not super deep either. So your mileage may vary. It also comes in their signature red color, 00:03:52.180 --> 00:03:56.580 but I actually really appreciate the stealth look. Like these kind of look almost professional in a sense. 00:03:56.580 --> 00:04:01.100 Like they look like something you'd see somebody wearing backstage at a show. The microphone is bendy. 00:04:03.420 --> 00:04:04.580 Wow, look at that. 00:04:10.380 --> 00:04:15.420 Incredible. We good. It recognized that immediately as the HyperX Cloud 3s, 00:04:15.420 --> 00:04:20.360 and you can see that there is no RGB. So if you are a fan of the stealth look, 00:04:21.260 --> 00:04:25.340 you got a winner, baby. And now we're gonna see how awful their software is. 00:04:25.340 --> 00:04:27.780 Typically, it's a gaming headset. 00:04:28.820 --> 00:04:32.020 So the software is gonna be garbage. 00:04:32.020 --> 00:04:36.900 Sweet, that's how simple it is. It's working, it's functional. 00:04:36.900 --> 00:04:38.860 That's the smoothest this has ever gone. 00:04:40.100 --> 00:04:42.220 Yeah, a round of applause. 00:04:44.300 --> 00:04:50.140 You did the basic thing, I'm proud of you. And I don't wanna sound facetious towards HyperX. 00:04:50.180 --> 00:04:53.300 This was actually a really smooth experience. It just works. 00:04:53.300 --> 00:04:56.580 Do you need an account for your headphones? No, there's no account. 00:04:56.580 --> 00:05:02.820 What? There's no account, it just works. I have the spatial audio, it's gonna be dope. 00:05:02.820 --> 00:05:07.060 Okay, maybe it's not so good. Oh, driver's almost installed. We start my computer. 00:05:07.060 --> 00:05:10.420 And we are back. 00:05:10.420 --> 00:05:14.380 After one quick reboot, we now have the audio device fully installed, 00:05:14.380 --> 00:05:19.700 allowing us to take advantage of DTX spatial sound, as well as an equalizer that they have in the settings. 00:05:20.860 --> 00:05:23.920 Oh, look at that. The nice thing about this, 00:05:23.920 --> 00:05:28.420 God, and the software's actually responsive. It's amazing that I've impressed by this. 00:05:28.420 --> 00:05:33.760 It's a menu. But that just shows the sorry state of gaming software. 00:05:33.760 --> 00:05:39.180 It comes with multiple EQ presets, as well as a customizable one, two, three, four, five, 00:05:39.180 --> 00:05:42.540 six, seven, eight, nine, 10 band EQ. 00:05:42.540 --> 00:05:46.140 In the software, you also have the options to turn on or off mic monitoring. 00:05:46.140 --> 00:05:51.060 Is this the volume wheel? Actually, it's not actually adjusting the volume. 00:05:51.060 --> 00:05:54.700 That's what it's supposed to do, right? It's supposed to be a volume wheel, right? 00:05:54.700 --> 00:05:57.620 Don't wanna blast my ears. Wow, the duck song. 00:06:00.060 --> 00:06:05.740 I'm glad I took those off. This was as David theorized. 00:06:05.740 --> 00:06:08.980 This has an independent volume knob. It does not adjust your Windows volume. 00:06:08.980 --> 00:06:14.240 It adjusts the volume of the headset itself. Okay, now I'm gonna give some listening impressions. 00:06:16.580 --> 00:06:21.580 Sound wise, they sound pretty good. 00:06:29.220 --> 00:06:33.620 They do have a little bit of brightness up in the highs that I find that could be a little bit piercing 00:06:33.620 --> 00:06:37.180 for some people, but it's great for gaming where you wanna hear the small details, 00:06:37.180 --> 00:06:41.940 like rustling leaves or the footsteps of your enemies. At the bottom, there's a little bit of a bass boost, 00:06:41.940 --> 00:06:46.300 but not so much in the sub-bass, so you don't get the biggest amount of rumble, 00:06:46.300 --> 00:06:49.720 but you do get enough oomph and thump 00:06:49.720 --> 00:06:54.140 from a little bit of a bass increase, but other than that, they seem actually pretty neutral. 00:06:54.140 --> 00:06:59.180 In terms of sound stage, well, they're not the widest. 00:06:59.180 --> 00:07:02.620 They are closed back headphones, so they're not gonna be super, super wide, 00:07:02.620 --> 00:07:06.440 but I was actually pretty impressed with how well things were placed, 00:07:06.440 --> 00:07:10.420 at least in terms of listening to music. We'll play some games in just a moment. 00:07:10.420 --> 00:07:14.760 Honestly, they're not really coloring the sound a whole lot either, which is kind of cool, 00:07:14.760 --> 00:07:17.440 especially at the price that I know that these are gonna be at. 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:23.240 Which is a good price. However, if you turn on the DTSX feature, 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:27.280 it sounds terrible. It makes things sound boomy 00:07:27.280 --> 00:07:31.120 and just not really positioned in the right area. You lose a bunch of details. 00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:35.400 There's kind of a weird random reverb to everything. It just doesn't know what to do with it, 00:07:35.400 --> 00:07:39.000 and that's kind of the case for any sort of spatial audio solution 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:42.280 that isn't receiving a proper spatial input. 00:07:42.280 --> 00:07:48.440 I was just listening to normal stereo tracks, so it was just kind of really trying hard to place stuff, 00:07:48.440 --> 00:07:51.800 and it was doing a terrible job. The nice thing is that you also get that EQ in it, 00:07:51.800 --> 00:07:56.280 so if there's anything that you don't really like about it, you can pretty easily adjust it. 00:07:56.280 --> 00:08:00.240 Listening to very complex tracks, the details of instruments and vocals might not always shine through. 00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:03.720 This isn't exactly the most detail-oriented headphone 00:08:03.720 --> 00:08:07.480 out there, but I'm still gonna call it pretty good. 00:08:07.480 --> 00:08:10.760 But what does the robot say? Measuring the headphones on our fake human head, 00:08:10.760 --> 00:08:16.040 we can see our frequency response curve. The dotted line is our target curve, 00:08:16.040 --> 00:08:20.760 and the green line is how these measure. Just because something deviates from the target curve 00:08:20.760 --> 00:08:24.040 doesn't make it bad, but our target curve is designed 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:28.400 so that it represents what the majority of people will like in a headphone. 00:08:28.400 --> 00:08:32.440 And there's always a million other things about headphones that you may or may not like, 00:08:32.440 --> 00:08:35.760 and also, every headphone will sound different on your head. 00:08:35.760 --> 00:08:40.040 You are not a standardized robot. You're a special, unique individual. 00:08:40.200 --> 00:08:45.080 Looking here, we can see that there is that bump in the bass as well as a little bit of a drop in the sub-bass. 00:08:45.080 --> 00:08:49.840 The mids, though, it says pretty consistent, along with our target, meaning it will sound relatively neutral. 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:55.080 The upper mids, there's a little bit of a dip and a spikiness, especially at the six kilohertz region, 00:08:55.080 --> 00:08:59.600 which could be a little bit harsh or fatiguing, 00:08:59.600 --> 00:09:03.400 but it's really not that bad. It's pretty well-controlled in the treble 00:09:03.400 --> 00:09:08.520 for this kind of headphone, and it's not doing any of the aggressive deep V-tuning 00:09:08.520 --> 00:09:12.560 that a lot of gaming headphones like to do or cheaper mainstream headphones. 00:09:12.560 --> 00:09:16.200 So it's not bad. You're now listening to me on the microphone 00:09:16.200 --> 00:09:19.920 of the HyperX Cloud 3s. Looking at the microphone curve, 00:09:19.920 --> 00:09:23.720 we can see a pretty flat response, which is exactly what we're looking for. 00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:27.840 Remember, this is a compensated curve, unlike the headphone curve, which is raw. 00:09:27.840 --> 00:09:33.120 We want a perfectly flat line in this scenario. There's a big dip just above the 10 kilohertz region, 00:09:33.120 --> 00:09:35.560 which is a little bit above where you hear most speech, 00:09:36.200 --> 00:09:39.240 things like S's and T's might be a little bit dampened, 00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:43.640 but you shouldn't hear too profound of an effect on it. And you can see that there's a bit of a scoop up 00:09:43.640 --> 00:09:46.680 at the bottom where the bass is, though very, very low, 00:09:46.680 --> 00:09:51.240 and typically out of the range of the human voice. But the downside to that is that it could introduce 00:09:51.240 --> 00:09:56.040 some rumbles from, say, trucks outside or like an AC unit working. 00:09:56.040 --> 00:09:59.120 That could kind of affect the sound. 00:09:59.120 --> 00:10:02.880 Other than that, it's pretty flat. What do you guys think it sounds like? 00:10:03.160 --> 00:10:07.400 Oh, and can you hear the keyboard when I'm talking? I'm typing really hard. 00:10:15.400 --> 00:10:19.600 Let's play some games. Do you have any games on your laptop? 00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:20.100 OK. 00:10:33.440 --> 00:10:40.320 Yeah, OK, so the DTSX spatial audio thing 00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:43.720 doesn't happen at the game level. It happens at the driver level. 00:10:43.720 --> 00:10:47.280 So it's just kind of applying a weird filter to all of the sounds. 00:10:47.280 --> 00:10:52.160 And running around in cyberpunk with DTSX on 00:10:52.160 --> 00:10:55.920 sounded like a little bit more exciting and spacious. 00:10:55.920 --> 00:10:59.200 But then I realized that sounds weren't really coming from where they were located. 00:10:59.200 --> 00:11:03.520 And once I turned off DTS, it actually sounded better. 00:11:03.520 --> 00:11:08.920 This is one of the issues with the way that spatial audio is basically implemented and or not 00:11:08.920 --> 00:11:14.120 implemented by a lot of developers is that there's no one way for everybody 00:11:14.120 --> 00:11:19.360 to do spatial audio that doesn't require some sort of weird middleman like Dolby or DTS. 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:24.000 Dolby especially sucks because basically all that Dolby does is charge really, really high prices 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:27.720 for all of their licensing. And then they advertise really hard 00:11:27.720 --> 00:11:33.560 and that makes everything more expensive. Hey, I guess it's a feature that you get. 00:11:33.560 --> 00:11:38.080 And for the price, which is $100, 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:42.080 you're not doing that bad. It's the same as the last price HyperX Cloud 2s. 00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:47.560 So great, there's been no bump in price, though this is a pretty marginal upgrade 00:11:47.560 --> 00:11:53.080 from what I've seen with both of them. While I haven't listened to the HyperX Cloud 2s recently, 00:11:53.080 --> 00:11:58.000 they, these both look the same. They feel the same and they don't really offer more features. 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:01.520 I mean, even the HyperX Cloud 2 had that cool neck dongle 00:12:01.520 --> 00:12:05.760 that allowed you to change the volume and stuff. You don't get any of that here. It's all on the headset. 00:12:05.760 --> 00:12:12.280 Maybe that's just preference, but it should be noted that you can get the HyperX Cloud 2s for $20 less. 00:12:12.280 --> 00:12:14.920 So are these worth it? 00:12:15.960 --> 00:12:19.560 Tough to say. They will be once they stop selling the HyperX Cloud 2s, 00:12:19.560 --> 00:12:22.640 but there's so many of those out in the world because they're a very popular headset 00:12:22.640 --> 00:12:26.000 that I don't think you'll have any trouble finding the HyperX Cloud 2s for a long time. 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:29.200 I think if you're in the market for a $100 headset, 00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:34.360 this will not do you wrong. There are some other options like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3, 00:12:34.360 --> 00:12:37.840 or if you want wireless, you can still get some of the Razer Barracudas, 00:12:37.840 --> 00:12:41.880 which I would recommend avoiding because everything I've heard from Razer sounds like dog do. 00:12:41.880 --> 00:12:46.280 But if wireless is very important to you, Barracuda might be the way to go. 00:12:46.280 --> 00:12:50.080 If you like this, why don't you check out that video with the NZXT Relay lineup of products 00:12:50.080 --> 00:12:53.120 where they had a cool little headphone stand that makes it so that your speakers stop 00:12:53.120 --> 00:12:55.800 when you put your headphones down. That was pretty cool.