HyperX Cloud Alpha S review: An imperfect pair of gaming headphones

Can it better the benchmark set by Cloud Alpha?

HyperX’s Cloud Alpha S is by all accounts an upgrade to the Cloud Alpha - which was already a pretty great gaming headset. The Cloud Alpha S’s comfortable design mirrors its predecessor, but it also comes with some souped-up audio technology and a snazzy blue colour scheme to justify the S$30 price increase from the Cloud Alpha.

A couple of new features have been added to these headphones, such as virtual 7.1-channel surround sound, a mixer and adjustable bass sliders. Unfortunately, every one of these additions has their own specific downsides, making these headphones a solid, but imperfect effort from HyperX. Let’s get into it. 

How does it look?

While Hyper X’s Cloud Alpha S isn’t as aggressively flashy as the average gaming peripheral, it’s still pretty stylish in its own right. These headphones only come in black-and-blue for now, but I actually like the look of this design quite a bit. The ear forks are really the only noticeable splash of colour on these headphones, but they stand out in a good way. I’m not sure I’d want to take them out in public, though. 

At first glance, these headphones look a little bulky, which shouldn’t come as a surprise - It is a gaming peripheral, after all. It doesn’t feel bulky or heavy though, with the headband and ear cups providing a pretty nice sense of comfort. I used these headphones for pretty long stretches of time, and I liked having them on quite a bit. My ears never felt squashed or trapped - even after long gaming sessions or Netflix binges. 

Unfortunately, when you add in the USB audio control mixer, things start to fall apart in the comfort department - but the mixer really deserves a section of its own.

About that mixer

The biggest addition to the Cloud Alpha S is the new USB audio control mixer. The headphones’ 3.5 mm cable plugs into the mixer, which then connects to your PC via a USB port. This results in a rather unwieldy mess of long and tangled cables that can get really annoying during use. Some good cable management will have to do here, seeing as the mixer is placed pretty low on the cable. It’s liable to fall off the desk more than a few times - but you can clip it to something, such as your shirt. Unfortunately, that means you'll be gaming with a bunch of wires stuck to your body. Fun!

Once you have that sorted out, the mixer comes with a couple of neat quality-of-life features. The buttons are pretty large and easy to use, so trying to adjust a setting while gaming is a piece of cake. For example, two of the mixer’s buttons allow you to adjust the balance between game audio and voice chat. That can be pretty useful if your friends have particularly soft audio on your end, or you just want to tune them out and focus on the game. Either way, it works.

There are also two separate buttons to raise or lower the volume, and a button to mute and unmute your microphone input. The most important button however, is right in the middle of the mixer - labelled ‘7.1’. The Cloud Alpha S offers virtual surround sound - virtual being the key word here. This stereo headset still just has ‘HyperX dual chamber drivers’, but with virtual surround sound software specifically made for it as well. It should sound great, right? Not quite.

Does virtual surround sound improve the headphones' proposition?

What you get out of the Cloud Alpha S’ 7.1-channel virtual surround sound will depend on what you use it for. Individually, different sounds can become much more pronounced and clear - making good sound design in videogames a lot more noticeable. Ape Out for example, is full of bombastic, ‘reactionary’ jazz. The game's music reacts to how much chaos you’re causing, and it felt amazing to pick up on the more subtle musical changes while playing. 

While the headphones’ surround sound can have quite an impact on multiplayer gaming as well (with footsteps being heard more easily, for example), its overall effect on audio quality is quite disappointing. The tech HyperX uses here distorts most noises while making them more pronounced at the same time. Movies and TV shows sound downright awful - with a distant, echo-y feel to every line of dialogue that robs them of any sense of realism. Music sounds particularly tinny with virtual surround sound turned on.

This is the case with gaming, as well. While you hear a wider range of sounds more clearly, the difference in audio quality is palpable. Your audio experience might differ; for games like Ape Out which lacked cutscenes and dialogue, I quite enjoyed virtual 7.1 surround sound. Whenever Gears 5 entered a story cutscene on the other hand, I found myself turning it off for the sake of immersion - which is probably the opposite of what HyperX intended here.

How does it sound without virtual surround?

Without virtual 7.1 surround sound, the Cloud Alpha S sounds pretty great for its price range. It won’t exactly wow audiophiles, but it’s otherwise a great option for music, gaming and Netflix-binging. Audio is pretty rich all around - whether you’re diving away from an incoming grenade in Gears 5 or watching Henry Cavill slice-and-dice a Striga in Netflix’s The Witcher. It doesn’t seem to be much of an upgrade over the Cloud Alpha however, so it might not be worth the purchase for those who already own the original. 

Another important feature to note are the headphone's adjustable bass sliders. The left and right ear cups each come with a small button - a slider that lets you adjust the headphone’s level of bass in three settings. It’s a hardware solution to a software problem, with the sliders physically opening and closing a small part of the headset to give the bass more or less oomphf.

There is a noticeable difference when flicking the sliders, but not as much as I’d have liked. You get used to the middle setting very quickly, because the ‘high bass’ and ‘low bass’ options just aren’t the selling factors they want to be. You might favour the 'high bass' setting if you listen to a lot of electronic music and such, but honestly - it doesn't make much of a difference, not even in gaming. Overall, the sliders just seem like a neat design idea that could use some more work. 

Verdict

While I do like the Cloud Alpha S quite a bit, I would be hard-pressed to recommend this over the Cloud Alpha. It is barely an improvement over its predecessor, with a couple of new features that all disappoint in one way or another. For newcomers to Hyper X’s Cloud Alpha series, this is still a pretty good set of gaming headphones - with a decent mic, great sound quality and comfortable earpieces that won’t fail you, even after hours of play. 

Unfortunately, all of its downsides will still be felt. The 7.1 virtual surround sound almost feels gimmicky in its execution, and the mixer hardly feels necessary due to the amount of finagling it takes to get comfortable with. You could just detach the mixer and get rid of all these problems - but then you’re basically paying S$30 more than the Cloud Alpha for two bass sliders!

Overall, the Cloud Alpha S is a decent set of headphones that only marginally improves upon its predecessor. For gamers - this is a pretty solid choice, though the Cloud Alpha remains the cheaper, more quality-consistent option. For a similarly priced pair of gaming headphones, try the Plantronics RIG 800LX.

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