I’ve been cycling through a few old gaming headsets over the past year, reluctant to make the hefty investment to finally get a decent upgrade, and all of them have low-quality mics that make me far too quiet. I shouted that enemies were over the hill, we all died, and I later found that all my friends could hear was a gargled whisper. It doesn’t help that I’m a shy, awkward mumbler. Cue the HyperX Cloud 3, which not o🎃nly has a clear mic that picks up my voice and littl🌳e else, but one that isn’t awkwardly long or completely stiff.
I went from being the quiet one everyone had to dial up to 200 percent on Discord and PlayStation parties to obnoxiously loud. I hopped on for a game of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of Duty: Warzone 2 with the HC3, said hello, and my mates jumped. They quickly scrambled to turn me down, but I was still too loud. Turns out, I had dialled myself up to the maximum because of old headsets, but even on the lower end, my voice was coming through crisp and clear. Finally, some good food (read: audio qu𝄹ality).
Given that the HyperX Cloud 3 is only $99, which falls into the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:‘budget gaming headset’ tier, that’s pretty impressive. And if the Cloud 2 is anything to go by, I’ll still be using this in years to come. I used to go through cheap $30 gaming headsets every year for the better part of a decade, which ended up costing me much more than $99. And there was one pair that ripped my ear up, b𒅌ut that’s another story.
The long and short of it is that the HC3 is brilliant for the low price point, and that extends beyond the mic quality to the audio itself. It’s not up to par with my Sony WH-1000XM4, but that’s a $240 pair of headphones built for music—of course, it doesn’t. It comes surprisingly close, though—the noise cancelling isn&rsquꩵo;t suffocating to the point where the outside world ceases to exist, music is striking and coherent with each instrument shining rather than blending into mush, and importantly, it’s not tinny. There’s nothing worse than an echoey, tinny headset.
The extended USB wire is also a huge improvement from the last HyperX Cloud headset. The option to mute your mic is no longer on a bulky brick in the middle of your cable, it’s a button on the headset itself, and even comes with a USB-C to USB dongle. I play and work on a laptop, which means I don’t have many USB ports, but I do have a USB-C one that mostly goes unused, meaning that I can finally free up some space. It also means I can use this headset with my phone, which is incredibly handy as I can hop into PlayStation and Xbox par🎃ties to chat with my mates even when I&rsqu✱o;m not up for a game. And, of course, you can do away with the USB wire and just use the 3.5mm jack with a controller—since USB headsets don’t work on consoles, that’s perfect.
The HyperX Cloud 3 is a comfortable, ergonomic headset that fits even my big ugly noggin. The mic doesn’t get in the way but still picks up my voice better than any I’ve used in the past, and the ease-of-setting-up thanks to coming with all the necessary parts rather than selling them separately made this adaptable in all the best ways. I used to recommend 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the HyperX Cloud 2 and Revolver to anyone wh🌱o would listen, which was itself recommended to me by an old CS:GO pal, and I can see myself doing the same for its successor. 🎃It iterates on the last two in all the right ways, and for $99, it’s a steal.
The HyperX Cloud 3 was provided for this review.