Recently I've been given the chance to check out HyperX's latest headset, the Cloud Revolver. I've never done a headset review before so this one will be interesting, but as I'm putting this thing through the paces, I wanted to give a few first impressions about it. The first impression I got out of the box was it's weight and design. It's not heavy, but compared to my Turtle Beach X12 which I've been using for the past few years, it does have a little more weight to it. As for the design, I like how you don't have to manually adjust each side up or down to get it to fit on your head properly; it slides up and down when you put it on your head, adjusting it to the shape of your head automatically. While that's nice, combined with the weight it seems to adjust a little too much and it feels weird at times.
The audio quality when using it with my PC is pretty good, though I haven't used it with any game systems yet outside of my cell phone. The headset uses 3.5mm jacks, plus my X12s came with an adapter that can hook into any red and white audio cables (used originally with my Xbox 360), so I can literally use the headset with just about any game system I own and will put this through its paces in my full review. However, even without the adapter from the X12s, you can still use this headset with any system that has a 3.5mm jack which includes pretty much any handheld system. Trust me when I say I plan to use this with the old-school Game Boy and Atari Lynx.
My only real complaint thus far is the mic. I read another review where the person had to put the mic almost right up to his mouth for anything to come through at a good audible level, and I have to agree. When recording something in Audacity I have to move the mic rather close to my mouth to record something if I don't want to have to alter the audio levels afterwards. The mic is pretty flexible, but it still bothers me that I have to move it that close. To this point I haven’t tested this yet while doing any live streaming, only videos for YouTube. The overall quality in those videos turned out pretty good, provided the mic was in the right spot.
That being said, my first impressions of the HyperX Cloud Revolver are pretty good. Outside of the weight being a bit heavier than what I’m normally used to with a PC headset, I do appreciate not having to manually adjust it whenever I put it on. The input and output qualities are both pretty good, at least with what I’ve tested them with so far. Again, I plan on putting this thing through its paces with every system I own that I can use it with. Then again I doubt most people would care about using a 2016 headset with an NES, but I digress. When I report back with my full review, we’ll see if my first impressions hold true, or if I find some sort of issue that I haven’t noticed yet.
