For gamers, every bit of equipment in their kit is equally valuable, and they usually do not want any kind of compromise with their accessories. However, quite often, a gamer has to make a difficult choice – say, if the user has a limited budget and is buying a high-end gaming monitor, he or she may have to settle for a budget gaming headset. That leads us to a question – are there any good ‘budget’ gaming headsets around?

As if to give us an answer, Kingston, a name that’s almost always associated with storage memory, released a new pair of gaming headphones in India – the HyperX Cloud. Now, the name does sound deceptive (we initially thought it was some cloud storage solution) but the headset itself surprised us a lot when we tried it out.

Design and build When you open the HyperX Cloud headset’s packaging, you just can’t help but notice how generous the manufacturers have been, in terms of throwing in some goodies. The box contains a lot of extensions and adaptors, expanding the headset’s compatibility beyond just a PC. There’s a mesh nylon travel pack, and even some extra velour earcups if you don’t fancy using the standard leatherette earcups.

But we don’t see why you wouldn’t, because the standard earcups are extremely comfortable. The velour earcups are even more comfy. Only, switching the earcups can be a bit of a bother. The headset has a minimalist design, and you can see that it has a nice mix of plastic and aluminium construction. In short, these pair of headphones can take a lot of beating.

And despite all that metal construction, the device doesn’t weigh down on your head, nor does it feel tight after extended hours of usage. We just can’t emphasise enough on how incredibly comfortable the HyperX Cloud is.

Performance The HyperX Cloud delivers a very balanced, all-round performance. Everything we expected from it, we got, and more. We hooked it up to our TV set, and alternatively to the consoles as well, and the Cloud reproduced very tight bass lines and crisp highs. Individual notes and voices, on games such as Halo 4 and Assassin’s Creed IV sounded very clear. The 53mm drivers have been well tuned to reproduce the extreme range of highs and lows that are commonly encountered in most action game titles.

We even put the headset through a Big Bang Theory marathon session, and it delivered absolutely brilliant sound and comfort. There is a drawback though – as a gaming headset, we had expected Dolby Surround Sound support, but there’s none.

Verdict With its versatile performance, and a rather competitive price tag, the HyperX Cloud headset is not just a good gaming headset but also an all-round proposition. Sure, we sorely missed in-build surround sound, but then again, it’s no ₹20k Sennheiser or Razer.

₹7,499

Love – Comfortable; Balanced reproduction

Hate – No surround sound

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