Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hardware box today we'll be taking a look at the HyperX cloud revolver s this is HyperX whose new flagship gaming headset it's a closed back over ear design that's wired and supports Dolby 7.1 surround sound I've been using this headset for the past couple of weeks playing some games watching movies and listening to music and I think it's a pretty decent gaming headset overall I'm going to start off by talking about the area that I think is of most interest to you guys and that is the sound quality this is a $150 headset around 200 Australian dollars so you'd be expecting pretty good sound quality from a headset of this price and the cloud revolver s certainly delivers in this regard without messing with any profiles or equalizers I think this headset is quite pleasant to listen to it's even and balanced across all frequencies and gives you quite a lot of detail through the mid-tones and the highs but on the bass and there's still enough punch that you get that nice Rumble from explosions and an up depth to the bass in music the miss respect I was really pleased with the sound profile because some gaming headsets tend to punch out the bass too much but here it's much more balanced and pleasant overall the cloud revolver s seems to keep this nice balance throughout most of its volume range so whether you're listening to something quiet or you're really blasting out some music you'll still get a pleasant listening experience it's only when you really crank out the volume to its maximum that you will notice some very minor distortions particularly in the mid-tones you might hear some accentuated vocals when you're listening to music but aside from that I think that for most comfortable listening volumes and the normal range that you'll be using the cloud revolver s4 you'll be getting a very good listening experience here perhaps even more impressive than the sound quality of this headset is the comfort these bad boys have been on my head for extended sessions throughout the week including gaming and video editing and at times I've even forgotten that they've actually been on my ears they're that comfortable the padding around the top of the headset is very plush and the suspension system that allows the headset to sit nicely and comfortably and were almost weightlessly on your head gives you that ultimate Comfort experienced the padding around the ear cups is also very good and combined with the over ear design you'll be able to use this headset for hours at a time without feeling any discomfort whatsoever it's also we're talking about the design of this headset because I'm quite pleased with what HyperX has done here there's premium materials used all around such as metal along the top edge of the band there's a leather use for most of the padding areas of this headset now quite like this soft touch matte plastic that's used on the outside of the ear cuffs it gives quite a nice visual design to this headset it's not too gamer style and also feels solid and well built as for the features of this headset there's two ways you can connect it to your PC the headset itself features of 3.5 ml audio output which can be either connected to a USB dongle which I'll talk a little bit of that in just a moment or at - 3.5 mm audio jack splitter that allows you to plug in both the headphone and microphone into two separate ports depending on the data that's included with your PC you might find that plugging in through the 3.5 ml or do cables provides a slightly better audio experience but at least for me I use the USB dongle primarily because I felt it gave a very minor improvement to audio quality overall that said using the USB dongle does introduce some hiss to the speaker's when you're not listening to any audio which is not present while using the 3.5 mm audio jacks so if you find that hiss unpleasant you might just need to ditch the USB dongle entirely there are a couple of other reasons to ditch the dongle as well firstly its position on the cable doesn't make a whole lot of sense I mean where am I supposed to put this dongle am I supposed to clip it to my pants clip it to my shirt or just leave it in my lap it seems like a fairly awkward position for these controls that would be better integrated onto the headset itself I wasn't impressed with the Dolby 7.1 surround sound mode either which is exclusive to the USB dongle and a key feature of this headset simply put when I was listening to games and movies with surround sound I thought that I was better able to hear things behind me and to the side of me when this mode was disabled as opposed to when it was enabled for example when I was playing a game that had enemies coming from behind me that I was trying to pick the surround side mode made it seem like these enemies will actually above me in terms of its spatial profile rather than behind me which is where they really were and this is disappointing because I figured the Dolby Surround mode would make it easier for me to pick out the location of enemies around me but it actually made it more difficult on top of that the surround mode makes it seem like the speakers are further away from you and more echoey than normal which can give quite an unpleasant experience when you listen to music or when you're watching some movies it kind of makes it seem like you're in a movie theater rather than in a studio experience and depending on your preferences that might not be the experience that you're after USB dongle also comes with some equalizer presets but like the 7.1 surround mode I did feel like these presets actually made the audio quality slightly worse most of the time you're better off just laying the natural audio quality of this headset takeover and not use these presets at all there are some benefits to using this dongle though you do get microphone and volume controls on the side which can be quite handy as well as a push-to-talk button for the microphone speaking of the microphone is detachable on this headset which I really appreciate because if you're listening to music or playing a single-player game and you don't need the microphone you can get it completely out of your way by simply disconnecting it as for the audio quality of the microphone well here's a short sample so that you can assess it for yourself this is a quick test using the HyperX cloud revolver SS microphone as you can hear it's not particularly amazing quality by any stretch but it should suffice for gaming applications though I wouldn't recommend it really for anything else you do get nice feedback into the headphones so you can hear own voice and this it does assist with using this microphone a little bit you can hear posis though when the microphone is placed quite close to your mouth and at times you can hear breathing as well when it's positioned this close such as that's just me breathing through my nose sort of moderately loudly I guess so couldn't can be quite annoying at times but if you place a microphone anything further away such as out here for example you can definitely hear the difference in volume and and quality a bit so you really do need to place it reasonably close to your but that does introduce those plosive sounds and also the annoyance of breathing at times but oh well I guess the main feature of this headset isn't its microphone it's definitely it's audio quality and comfort so like I said should be good enough for gaming there is one good thing about this microphone though and that is that it's noise canceling I've got some music playing quite loudly on my phone just in front of me here but it doesn't have a big effect on the ability to hear my voice through the microphone and that's a pretty great thing if you've got quite a noisy environment that you're gaming in and you don't want external noises coming into that microphone noise well it's not going to be a big deal on the HyperX cloud revolver overall I'm very happy with the HyperX cloud revolver as I know they're an expensive headset at 150 dollars or around 200 Australian dollars but I think you get your money's worth from both sound quality and comfort perspective I wasn't as impressed with the USB dongle all the Dolby 7.1 surround sound mode but you don't need to use this dongle with this headset and I still think the surround sound that's provided in games and movies without the dongle is still very good nevertheless so you can pretty much just forget the dongle and still get a very decent experience from the HyperX cloud revolver s that's it for this review of this headset don't forget to check there's a written review on tech spot links to buy this headset in the description below and I'll catch you in the next one