REVIEW : Kingston HyperX Cloud Core Headset

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INTRODUCTION

 

So I received these headphones from Kingston for a technical review of these bang of buck headphones that they have made. At this point they are already in the game with the cloud and cloud core 2 so i guess i am a little late on these one but u know these are still selling great and more and more people should know about these hell of a comfortable gaming headsets which also performs very good when it comes to music.

So we start by looking at what u get in the box first and Kingston have packed these one with some paperwork in a soft mold which has a detachable mic and very handy and lengthy extension cable (female 4 pole 3.5mm) which is very useful for pc gamers .The product comes in a very cool and sturdy box which sports hyperx logos proudly.

Gaming

I tested these headphones for like 10 days and did almost continuous gaming and Netflix with it. But what I also looked out for was quality of sound it offers when u listen to your fav music. Firstly because it’s an gaming headset it should deliver great audio experience when you play games so i played games like GTA 5 with its outstanding ambience sounds and for variety in games radio stations then I played hotline Miami 2 and also did some level editing which literally took hours and i found that these headphones are really comfortable during long gaming sessions. I gave them to one of my friends and he played CS GO for hours and never complained about any discomfort of any kind.

Comfort and Style

As the headphone offers padded soft stitched headband there was no pain on the head after long hours of gaming nor i felt that i am playing with something heavy on my head. Then comes these soft padded ear cushions which takes on heavy intense time consuming gaming head on. It weighs 350g with mic and cable which is normal and fits perfectly on my small head and doesn’t look like a helmet.

The headphones which came for the review are black in color and i checked on the website of hyperx that cloud core doesn’t come in any other than black and other models in the series like cloud and cloud 2 have some choice to choose from like cloud offers white and mav and cloud 2 offers red pink and gunmetal colors to choose from, so it would have been good if they offered some variety to choose from.

As I received these black ones I really liked these stitched red headband which sports this hyperx logo which is also stitched which is cool other than that it offers red colored logo on the sides which perfectly suits it has sturdy aluminum framing.

Performance

For measuring performance of headphones i looked for the impedance that these headphones offer .Cloud core offers nominal impedance of 60 ohms by which we can conclude that these are balanced pretty good as if we go on the lower impedance levels then we will get louder headphones which are more efficient but will require more efficient amplifier as well and hence will increase cost and if impedance is higher than headphones are less louder but will stress the amplifier less and hence cost will be reduced and it’s very important to balance it out to produce budget gaming headphones.

This one here is does not fall in low impedance or high impedance ranges of headphones and perform superbly.

Next one is the sensitivity of the headphones which is measured in decibels of sound pressure level per milliwatt (dB (SPL)/mW) or  decibels of sound pressure level per volt (dB (SPL) / V) these offers a value of 98+_3 db which is quite right as anything above 120 db leads to hearing loss and headphones generally falls between range of 80 to 120 db.

For these we can conclude that how effectively the headphones convert your electrical signal to audio sound which is measured in terms of sound pressure hence how loud the headphones are. Anything above 90db have restricted amplifier specs as more powerful amps and sensitive headphones can lead to hearing loss.

 

It also offers 150 mw (milliwatts) which is not more of use when using with computer and other devices and will come into consideration when plugged into an amplifier. As for gaming and music is in the picture this is kosher.

 

The sound coupling is Circumaural type or full size and which is it completely covers your ears to attenuate external noise. Ambient noise attenuation: approx. 20 dBa

Another major spec to look onto is frequency response which is how much sound frequency the headphones can play which user can easily listen to hyperx cloud offers the range of  15Hz–25,000 Hz actually humans cannot hear frequencies below 20hz but the values below it comes into play as you feel the bass frequencies below it which is amazing and  which is damn good at this price point.

 

another spec the manual  say is that it uses 53mm neodymium  dynamic drivers which means what transducer it uses. these are the common type and are robust and gives good results.The value 53 represents size of the speakers.

 

Microphone performance

It’s got back electret type condenser which are as good as capacitor types and are used widely.It’s designed in polar pattern which has cardioid shape which is widely used shape for mics which indicates how sensitive it is to sounds arriving at different angles about its central axis.The best mics in history are shaped in these ways for  eg. sm58 mics.

Then is powering of the element inside mic which is mentioned here as AB  powering which is basically phantom powering which is powering the mic with power of the headphones itself using 3.5 mm connector.

 

Then is the frequency response of 100-1200hz which is neat and you get flexible mic cord with a decent boom size and  of value  -39dB +/- 3dB and is set to pick up sound in a cardioid pattern with an impedance of < 2.2 KOhms.

That sums up with all the tech specs of the cloud core.

Music

I tuned to my fav tracks to find how they perform and found that cloud core hits the sweet spot easily with every track.

Here are some of the tracks that I used for the review

radoiactive-imagine dragons flaC

moon-dust

toots and maytals 54-46

massive attack-teardrop

stoned jesus-i am a mountain

stoned jesus-here comes the robot

I also followed some tracks recommended by reviewers from cnet and wirecutter

Steve Guttenberg – CNET.com

Amber Rubarth, Sessions from the 17th Ward (Chesky Records)

Alexandre Desplat, Birth (soundtrack) (New Line Records)

Lauren Dragan – TheWirecutter.com

Jose Gonzalez – “Heartbeats”

Kanye West- “Love Lockdown”

Music on these headphones is fantastic you can experience low bass effects and a punchy sounds with ease but remember these are not for major audiophiles as these are gaming headphones.

I also watched one-punch man and netflix with these and they were flawless there as well.

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