The IT Nerd

When you speak to competitive gamers, they will all likely say the same thing. Wired is better for winning. Wired mice, wired keyboards, wired all the things. The same is true for headsets. However HyperX is trying to change the game on that front with their HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 Wireless Headphones. Here’s what you get in the box:

Let’s start with the headphones. They are light and comfortable. They didn’t put any real pressure on my head or ears. That means that I can wear them for an extended period of time comfortably. More on that in a bit. There are adjustable and removable memory foam ear cups as part of the deal. Meaning that you can not only dial in your fit, but replace the ear cups when they become too gross to wear. The headband in the middle portion has the same memory foam as well which means that it also provides a fair amount of comfort. The headphones are made of plastic which is fine as I am not expecting AirPods Max type of materials for a gaming headset. One thing that I should note is that the microphone flips up and down. And that’s important because when you flip it up, it mutes you. When you flip it down, your speech becomes audible again. That’s pretty clever.

On the left ear, you get a USB-C port and the power switch. Pro tip: You need to hold the power switch to power these headphones on or off.

On the right side, you get a volume control. One thing that I should note about these headsets is that while they don’t claim to be Mac compatible, they worked just fine and spinning the volume control brought up the volume indicator on the screen. That was kind of neat.

Also included are a USB-C to USB-A cable for charging purposes along with the 2.4 GHz wireless receiver that you need use these headphones.

Here’s some other specs that I pulled off of the HyperX website:

• Driver: Dynamic, 50mm with neodymium magnets
• Type: Closed back
• Frequency response: 10Hz – 20.2 kHz
• Sensitivity: -12 dBFS/Pa at 1kHz
• T.H.D: ≤ 2%
• Microphone
  • Element: Electret condenser microphone
  • Polar Pattern: Bi-directional, Noise-cancelling
  • Sensitivity: -12 dBFS/Pa at 1kHz
• USB Specification: USB 2.0
• Bit-Depth: 16-bit
• Wireless Range: Up to 20m

Now, some random thoughts before I get into the rather unique testing that I did with these headphones:

• Battery life: HyperX claims 20 hours of battery life with a 3.5 hour recharge time. At the time of writing this review, I had charged them to full and used them for 11 hours without an issue on anything to game playing to Microsoft Teams calls. So 20 hours of battery life seems plausible to me.
• Setup: This is laughably easy. Plug in the 2.4 GHz receiver into a free USB port, turn on the headset, and set your audio output and input to the headset assuming that you’re on a PC or a Mac and declare victory. For the record, this will also work with a PS5 in a similar manner. But I did not test that as I do not have a PS5.
• Microphone Quality: People that I talked to had no complaints about being able to hear me clearly over the bi-directional noise-cancelling microphone, especially with the foam windscreen which helps reduce and filter out breathing noise. The key word is reduce because I did find one scenario where this wasn’t the case which I will get to later.
• Sound Quality: The sound put out by the headset is definitely crisp and clear, and depending on what you use it with, the sound can be quite loud. On the PC side of the fence, you can install their NGENUITY software and use it to not only tweak your sound, but to also unlock DTS Headphone:X Spatial Audio for even better sound.

Now, how did I test these headphones. As most of you know, I use an online cycling platform called Zwift to help me to keep and improve my fitness. You can get more info on that here, and here. But what you likely don’t know is that I am part of an online race team called Galaxy Cycling Club. Galaxy races on Zwift as well as run group rides on the platform as well. I race two or three times a week and one of those times is a team time trial where three to eight riders ride together to get the fastest time possible on a course that is anywhere from 30 to 50 kilometres in length. Here’s a picture of one of the time trials that I was in a few weeks ago:

You can see all of us in a line. That’s done to have the first person in line break the wind, and the others benefit from being in the draft of that person because they are doing about 20% less work than the person at the front of the line. That means you can go faster and have more in the metaphorical gas tank at the end. The person in the front spends 60 to maybe 90 seconds on the front before pulling off and going to the back of the line. That requires constant communication with the rest of the team so that the line is maintained. That’s where these headsets came in handy. I used them in one of these time trials and exposed them to not only sweat, but the sound of two fans that I keep in front of me to keep me cool. I will admit that this is an extreme test of these headphones. Especially since HyperX makes no claims as to water resistance. But I had almost no issues in the one hour and sixteen minutes that I was racing (covering 43K in that time for the record). The only issue that I had was the fans were clearly audible to my teammates which implies the fans overwhelmed the microphone’s ability to cancel out noise. That I do not think will be an issue for most people as most people will have a pair of fans cranked up to the max blowing cool air in front of them.

So after doing that extreme test of the headphones, let me get to the best part about them. The price. They retail for $129.99 CAD normally, but are currently on sale for $20 off. That’s a very good value for considering what these headphones can do for you. If you’re a competitive gamer, and even if you aren’t, these headphones are very much worth a look.

When you’re serious about pwning n00bs in whatever game you play, skill only gets you so far. Because if you’re playing with the average mouse, that will be the difference between winning and losing. That’s where a mouse like the HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2 comes in. This is a very lightweight gaming mouse that has a maximum polling rate of 8000Hz. Meaning that if you sense that someone is behind you, this mouse will allow you to quickly spin around and pick them off before they can pick you off.

Let’s have a look at the mouse:

From the top, it looks like every other mouse out there. But the tell tale RGB lighting is present, which tips you off that this is a gamer focused mouse. But there’s another thing that will make it clear that this mouse is focused on gaming:

You can add rubber grips to the buttons….

…. and the sides to make sure that your fingers don’t slip at a critical moment. Speaking of buttons, you get four plus the scroll wheel. You can program all of the buttons on this mouse using the HyperX NGENUITY Software (and I should mention that you can customize the RGB light as well using this software), but you can’t reprogram the scroll up/down inputs, and the left- and right-click button functions can only be switched. Not a deal breaker, but some of the competition allow you that level of customization. One big plus is the cable. It’s made out of paracord material and I had no issues with it snagging on anything. Why is that important? It’s important because it’s distracting and that might get you pwned.

I tested this first with Call of Duty Warzone, then with Team Fortress 2. Long story short, this mouse works well. It’s light which means that it won’t tire your hands, and it is very precise. I was able to precisely get headshots in Team Fortress 2 much easier with this mouse versus the mouse that I usually use. All the buttons are very tactile which takes away that moment of “did I click the button” that one might have in an intense gaming session. Finally, the rubber grips are something that you should try, especially if you have sweaty hands as it simply makes gaming better.

The only real downside to this mouse is that left handed people need not look at this mouse. That’s not unusual for mice, but it would be nice to see a gaming mouse that can be used by anyone. Having said that, I’d recommend this mouse if pwnage matters above all else. The HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2 is $80 CDN and worth it as far as I am concerned.