HyperX Cloud Stinger Review

The right weight to your money

The headphone family HyperX Cloud, has recently been enriched with a new entry level product offered at an extremely competitive price for a branded product, the HyperX Cloud Stinger.
I admit that at their presentation in October last year, I twisted my nose a bit imagining that at that price, HyperX risked a fake palse after the excellent Cloud Revolvers that have significantly elevated the perception of the brand. After a few days of use, I had to change my mind: the Cloud Stingers sound incredibly good, even too much for the price at which they are sold. But let's go by order.

Unboxing and design.

The HyperX Stinger are closed stereo headphones, with generous circumaural earpads and 50mm neodymium driver. It is, as we said, the entry level of the HyperX brand, which is offered at a decidedly interesting price that will tempt many people, perhaps distracting them from the purchase of Chinese products with a ridiculous price and yield… equally ridiculous.

The packaging is essential but accurate: under a thin glossy cover on which the main features of the headset are described, the black cardboard box entirely padded with foam holds the headphones which are thus extremely protected and courier-proof during the Christmas holidays. ". In addition to the quick start guide and a flyer that illustrates the other products of the HyperX brand, the only accessory included is a 1,7 meter extension cable with ay cable for connection to the main consoles, to the smartphone, or to the separate front output of your PC.

The headphones are constructed of a light, but good quality plastic (presumably ABS), which does not creak at any point even if you mistreat them a little. The adjustable headband in the upper part is engraved with the HyperX logo and is equipped with a click adjustment and a steel structure that guarantees good torsional resistance while containing the weight of the headphones in only 275 grams. The two large pavilions, on which the HyperX logo is printed in red, in addition to a good vertical adjustment of about 10 degrees, can also rotate horizontally by 90 degrees, allowing you not only to adapt them perfectly to the head, but also to keep them resting on the neck without any hindrance to your movements. In the lower part of the right pavilion, a very comfortable slide of excellent workmanship allows you to adjust the volume This is an incredibly functional design choice compared to the classic in-line volume control on the cable that often forces you to distract your eyes from the screen to search the controls, and that, useless to go around it, is one of the things I liked most about these headphones. On the left pavilion, on the other hand, there is the microphone with noise cancellation and Swivel to mute function (raising it, the microphone mutes). The microphone support is also built in a very pleasant material to the touch that allows you to adjust the curvature at will, but which is not affected by the classic folds that form on other adjustable microphones after a couple of times you have folded them.

The pavilions are both covered in good quality synthetic leather and with abundant memory foam, more or less 1 cm, an unusual choice for a so-called “entry level” product. The same goes for the headband which is also covered with abundant memory foam. Hyper X claims that the memory foam used is an exclusive formulation, and in fact, while maintaining the classic characteristics of resilience, this used on the Stingers seemed slightly softer than the one used for example on my wireless Steelseries H.

The assembly is excellent and the impression is that of being faced with a much more expensive product than its current price tag set at around 50 euros on Amazon. Even the comfort, after long gaming sessions is really excellent, probably thanks to the extreme lightness of the headphones but above all to the excellent quality of the padding. The only negative note, to want to find some, is the 3,5 mm cable, not very long with its 1,3m - but in the package there is a Y extension for use with PS4 and XBOX One, from 1,7 m - unfortunately not removable and coated in plain rubber.

As usual, before moving on to listening impressions, some technical specifications:

Listening test

As I said at the beginning, the HyperX Cloud Stinger are equipped with 50mm neodymium drivers. Dimensions and positioning of the drivers, visible under the thin layer of fabric that covers them, inside the pavilion, guarantee the headphones excellent directionality, essential in the gaming field, especially in FPS like Overwatch, a title with which I spent more than about 50 hours to test them

The excellent fit of the Stingers, the great flexibility of the earpads and the lightness of the headset surprised me, never being tiring even during the longest listening sessions. The generous padding also leaves room for the ears avoiding an excessive sensation of heat.

From the point of view of audio quality, even without performing any miracles, the Stingers are certainly placed in a higher range than what their price tag would suggest, perhaps approaching a little dangerously to the HyperX Cloud sisters. Being headphones dedicated to gaming, the chosen equalization favored the high and medium frequencies of the sound spectrum. Nonetheless, thanks to abundant drivers the lows were not penalized that much, although we cannot expect sensational descents to the bottom. On Battlefield 1, for example, the sound rendering is quite realistic even with the volume slide in half, which also testifies to the good sound pressure of the headset. The thrill of feeling the floor shaking when a tank passes by is missing a bit, but for this price it would be really illogical to expect more. The highs, at the same time, are always clear and crystalline, without ever becoming annoyingly metallic, while the midrange manages to compensate for the lack of punch in the low frequencies. The headphones surprise, however, not only for the aforementioned directionality, but also for an excellent sound
ge which is quite large and distinct.

The microphone is equipped with Swivel to mute functionality and active background noise cancellation, a pleasant surprise for the price range in which the product falls. The audio coming from the microphone is really good with always clear recordings and fully distinguishable voices, both in game and during Skype calls, although it does accentuate the nasality of some voices a little.