Wireless Headset: Best Audio Quality

The HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless delivers excellent audio quality and an effective base station designed for gamers. Offering three ways to connect (2.4Ghz, Bluetooth, and wired), this headset is as versatile as it is sleek. While it isn’t perfect, it gets close.

8/10

Battery Life

Up to 250 hours

Wireless?

Yes

Microphones

Electret unidirectional condenser boom microphone arm; Integrated omnidirectional MEMS microphone

The HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless gaming headset delivers immersive, rich sound thanks to dual-chamber drivers. It connects via 2.4Ghz, Bluetooth, or wired, offering wide compatibility across devices and a programmable RGB base station for easy audio and chat control.

Pros & Cons

• Ultra-comfortable design makes it easy to wear for hours
• Great sound quality for a wireless connection
• Clear voice pickup and chat
• Long-lasting battery life
• Programmable RGB base station is convenient and responsive

• The beta NGENUITY app is a bit glitchy
• The microphone volume could be higher
• Standard and spatial audio in wireless sound a bit thin

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Table of Contents

• • • How We Test and Review Products at How-To Geek
• Price and availability
• A sleek modern design
• Audio quality and drivers
• Outstanding performance overall, with a few notes
  • Wireless mode without spatial audio
  • Wireless mode with spatial audio
• The HyperX NGENUITY app
• A pleasant clarity from the microphones
• Should you buy the HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless?

We go hands-on with every product to ensure it’s worth your time and money.

Price and availability

The HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless gaming headset is available now from retailers like Amazon and the HyperX website, and comes in one color (Black). While its typical retail price is $299.99, I’ve seen it as low as $259.99.

A sleek modern design

The HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless headset is incredibly comfortable, thanks to the breathable microfiber earpads and the memory foam on the headband. I wear these for hours without feeling discomfort—a big plus for gamers or streamers who spend hours in front of a PC. The earcups also rotate up to 90 degrees to adjust to the user.

Nothing about this headset feels low-quality. The earcups are sturdy plastic, while the frame includes aluminum forks, and the headband is steel.

While most people will use the controls on the RGB base station, the headset’s controls are well-positioned. Still, they do take some getting used to. The left earcup houses the power button, a microphone mute button, a 3.5mm headset jack, a USB-C charging port, and a microphone port for the boom mic. Integrated into the right earcup is a wireless mode switch, a multifunction button, and a volume wheel.

Other than the technicalities, the headset’s design is a low-key choice, preferable to streamers and gamers who prefer a less flashy option than something like the Razer Kraken Kitty V3 Pro headset I recently reviewed.

The RGB base station is where you get some colorful lighting. Its design is blessedly simple (which I appreciate, since there’s almost no learning curve). It has six preprogrammed buttons that you can reprogram with those same presets or with specific hotkeys.

HyperX claims that this is the world’s first reprogrammable base station for a gaming headset. It’s definitely a plus, as I reprogrammed some buttons for everyday game actions, which saved me a lot of extra time when I was immersed in a game. The volume wheel is huge, so it’s unmissable if you’re focused on a game and want to quickly raise or lower the volume.

There’s also a handy microphone mute button nestled inside the volume wheel. And, of course, you can customize the RGB lighting, too. You’ll need the NGENUITY app to do all of that, which I’ll touch on later.

Audio quality and drivers

The HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless has 53mm dual-chamber dynamic drivers with neodymium magnets. Since the design is dual-chamber, one acoustic chamber handles the bass, while the other handles the mids and highs. The dual-chamber design delivers a smoother audio experience, and this headset didn’t disappoint in terms of quality.

Bass never felt overpowering, even when games featured intense, boomy sound effects. Meanwhile, trebles weren’t too harsh or sibilant, so I never experienced fatigue from either the low or high end during long gaming sessions.

The audio quality from the drivers is, overall, bright, clear, and well-mixed. I do have some nitpicky things to discuss further about performance. Most importantly, though, this headset delivered consistent audio, no matter what media I was consuming, and I experienced no distortion or muddiness.

Although I don’t love everything about this headset, it’s so darn near perfect that I believe most gamers would find it a worthy buy. For wireless headphones, these deliver solid audio quality for streaming, gaming, and music listening.

Outstanding performance overall, with a few notes

Credit: Cianna Garrison / How-To Geek

It isn’t very often that I walk away from reviewing a product and say, “Darn, that was almost perfect!” That’s what happened with the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless 2, though. The battery life alone made me want to give these a 10 out of 10, as I used them for over 40 hours without needing to charge them. After 40 hours, I was still at around 60% of battery life.

(I should note that the specs say it takes about six hours to charge the headset fully. The brand claims that you can eke out up to 250 hours of battery life with the Cloud Alpha 2. While I can’t confirm that it is possible, I can say my drain rate suggests getting at least 12 eight-hour days out of a single charge.)

But there are a few things that prevent these from taking the title of perfection, in my opinion. The first is the drastic sound difference I noticed when switching between wired mode and wireless modes. I saw a drop in overall audio quality when using wireless mode compared to wired mode.

When using a wired connection, the volume and overall sound quality were much fuller. I thought I might be imagining such a drastic difference at first. I’m well aware that audio quality can drop in wireless (especially with Bluetooth). Still, when I switched back and forth between those connection options while listening to Landon Tewers’ Too LateI felt like I was going crazy. After many more back-and-forths, I can confidently say that using this headset in wired mode rather than wireless makes the mids and bass richer and more balanced. This was consistent whether I was using Spatial mode in wireless or not.

It’s also worth noting that the headset isn’t noise-cancelling. However, the earcups themselves do a decent job of rejecting background noise. That said, I could still hear louder noises like a vacuum running in the next room, so if you’re hoping to block out the entire world while gaming, these might not do the trick.

Wireless mode without spatial audio

While I’d like to say that regular audio in wireless mode was well-balanced, I didn’t like it as much as wired mode. In wired mode, the sound was more balanced, with richer, clearer vocals, more boomy bass, and fleshed-out mids. When I had it in standard wireless mode, the vocals felt a little less central, the bass was less satisfying, and the trebles sounded less bright. Everything, in general, sounded less impressive, with a thinner audio quality. Because it seemed to push the vocals slightly back, some instrumental sounds in the music were a bit more overpowering.

Now, this isn’t to say the wireless modes weren’t “good.” They did a fine job with music, game audio, and spoken word. The problem is that once you hear the difference between wired and wireless, you might prefer to use wired mode most of the time. This definitely happened to me, as the difference was significant enough for me to prefer the better sound balance I got in wired mode. Everything felt a bit more compressed, lacking the fullness I came to prefer with a wired connection.

Some people might not even notice the difference. Personally, however, I feel I’d be remiss not to point it out. If you’re a bit more of an audiophile and prefer a more fleshed-out sound profile, bass boost, and thicker vocals (as opposed to the thinner sound you get with wireless), stick to wired when you can.

Wireless mode with spatial audio

Spatial audio works reasonably well, but sounds a little bit hollow when listening to music, as I stated previously. Unfortunately, spatial audio tuning is only available via wireless connections, not via the 3.5mm cable. This meant that the sound quality seemed to drop for me when I used it in this mode for music listening.

Where I feel spatial audio shone was in gaming. While gaming, spatial audio performs really well, making it easy to hear background noises, shots fired, and the overall directionality of sound in crucial moments. When playing games like Cyberpunk 2077I could easily discern dialogue to my right, a TV blaring in the background, and someone else talking to my left, which helped my immersion and gave me better instincts in fights. In Warhammer 40,000: DarktideI could hear enemies creeping up on me in important moments, while the bass kept the battle sounds (like grenades and gunfire) boomy without being overwhelming.

As for volume, it seemed the loudness wasn’t quite as high in wireless modes. I fixed this pretty easily, however, by adjusting the spatial audio settings’ volume bands in the compatible app. I also tweaked the equalization to boost specific frequencies. The option to customize sound like this made the headset all the more enjoyable.

The HyperX NGENUITY app

Downloading the companion app for the Cloud Alpha 2 headset was easy. I installed the new beta version of the app (the only option compatible with the Cloud Alpha 2 at the time of testing), which might account for any of the glitches I saw. Though these were few, I did experience a couple.

I liked the HyperX NGENUITY app overall, as it offered options to customize my sound, including 8- and 12-band volume controls in spatial audio settings (for chat, sub, center, left front, right front, left surround side, right surround side, and more), as well as reprogram the base station. The app is also where I can customize the base station’s colors, switch between listening modes, and adjust microphone settings.

I didn’t like that the app sometimes failed to reconnect to my headset automatically. This happened when I left the app open, turned off the headset, and walked away from my laptop for about 20 minutes. The app’s failure to recognize the headset again once I turned it on was annoying. A couple of times, I had to restart my laptop for the app to even show the headset.

That glitch was the most bothersome. The other one I noticed was pretty small and didn’t affect performance. Occasionally, the NGENUITY app would show a boxy section (as though it were the ghost of a selection box). This ghost box flashed like a slow-motion strobe.

Aside from those weird glitches, the app’s layout is straightforward, with tabs for Audio, Spatial Audio, Lights, and Keys. I easily customized the RGB base station with lighting effects and reprogrammed the keys in just a couple of clicks.

Overall, the app provides a mostly pleasant, breezy experience. And I should hope that those glitches disappear once the company releases the full version.

A pleasant clarity from the microphones

Credit: Cianna Garrison / How-To Geek

The Cloud Alpha 2 includes a primary microphone and a secondary microphone. The primary is a detachable boom mic, while the secondary is an integrated omnidirectional MEMS mic that will work if you’re not using the boom.

Aside from the fact that I wish these microphones picked up my voice a bit louder, I found them good enough for gaming and casual video calls. They aren’t, however, as good as I wish they were, considering the price point of the headset. I wouldn’t recommend sticking to the headset’s microphone system if you plan to stream professionally.

The NGENUITY app includes helpful features that can improve your sound, including AI noise reduction, a compressor, and a limiter. The noise reduction did a fairly good job of cutting out background noise, and the limiter and compressor gave my recordings a pleasant sound, but they didn’t work any miracles.

The microphone setup’s sound quality is somewhat compressed. The system captures my voice well enough, but it almost sounds too squashed. I appreciated that the boom microphone seemed competent at handling higher volumes, as it performed very well when I spoke louder than my usual volume and sang loudly into the mic.

Should you buy the HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless?

The HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless gaming headset isn’t the headset I’d suggest for professional streamers (thanks to the lackluster boom microphone). But I can wholeheartedly recommend this headset for casual and competitive gamers who want high-quality audio, wireless connectivity, and a comfortable design for hours of wear. This headset could have been perfect but for its aforementioned flaws. Nonetheless, I’d buy it for the comfort, sound quality, and battery life alone.

8/10

Battery Life

Up to 250 hours

Wireless?

Yes

Microphones

Electret unidirectional condenser boom microphone arm; Integrated omnidirectional MEMS microphone

The HyperX Cloud Alpha 2 Wireless gaming headset delivers immersive, rich sound thanks to dual-chamber drivers. It connects via 2.4Ghz, Bluetooth, or wired, offering wide compatibility across devices and a programmable RGB base station for easy audio and chat control.