KINGSTON HYPERX CLOUD REVOLVER S GAMING HEADSET REVIEW

Kingston's HyperX gaming division has a three tiers for its headset lineup, with the Cloud Stinger series aimed at budget gamers, the Cloud line for mainstream gamers, and the Cloud Revolver line for audio purists. The Cloud Revolver S is a new "S" version designed as an upgrade to the current Revolver model that adds a 7.1 Dolby Surround dongle for push-button immersion. At a $149 MSRP its priced exactly the same as many of its competitors including the Logitech G533, SteelSeries Arctis 7, and Asus Strix 7.1, so it’s got some stiff competition. Let's see how it stacks up.

Unlike less expensive headsets that are made entirely of plastic and cheaper materials, the Revolver S is high quality through and through. The headband frame is made entirely of thin steel, and is attached to ear cups made of hard plastic with white logos on each of them. Underneath the metal frame is an extremely soft, leather-wrapped pad that features unique white lace stitching to compliment the logos on the ear cups. Probably the most interesting design aspect of the Revolver S is that the headband itself is not adjustable at all, and doesn’t need to be. When you put it on it simply bends to conform to the size of your head, with the soft pad wrapping around your noggin and the metal frame an inch above it offering support. This makes it so the Revolver S simply “rested” on my ears, as opposed to feeling like they were being clamped. They are exceedingly comfortable, even on my small head.

Each ear cup is an “over ear” design that fits entirely over each ear, in case that wasn’t clear. They feature 50mm drivers, which is standard on a high-end headset. A braided 3.5mm cable snakes out of the left earcup, allowing you to plug it into the included Dolby Surround dongle, or an Xbox/PS4, or even a mobile device. This cross-platform compatibility is one of the Revolver S’s greatest strengths, as you can easily unplug them from the dongle and take them with you on the road, to a coffee shop, or to the living room for some console gaming.

The Dolby Surround dongle is quite small and has just two buttons; one for Dolby Surround and one to mute the microphone. On one side of it is an easily accessible volume knob, and the other side has a preset button that lets you run through three audio presets. Though the presets aren’t labeled, and there’s no software to use, to my ears they sounded like each one emphasized a particular part of the sound spectrum; highs, mids, and lows. You can also elect to use “none” of the presets as well.

The dongle features a long, braided USB cable so it can easily plug into the back of your PC, and also has a clip on its back so you can attach it to your clothes to make sure the cords don’t get in the way while gaming.

The noise cancelling microphone's boom is made of soft, bendable plastic, and is removable. It connects via a 3.5mm jack, so you can take it out when you just want to listen to music, or if you’re the silent type when gaming.

My first impression using the Revolver S for gaming is that they are extremely comfortable headphones. They rested lightly on my head, and never felt heavy despite their large size, and the material on the earcups felt like satin. They're not snug or tight; they just rest on your head. Even when gaming for a few hours I never noticed their presence aside from the fact that its cable kept rubbing up against my left arm as I had the surround dongle sitting on my desk. Thankfully there’s more than enough cable going from the dongle to my PC, so I ended up routing it under my desk, resting the dongle on top of my mid-tower when not in use.

For controls, I just had to keep the dongle within arm’s reach to enable surround sound or adjust the volume. I liked being able to just push a button on the dongle any time to enable surround sound, and it’s big enough that I was able to do it without having the look at what I was doing. Being able to enable it on the fly allowed me to try to figure out if it was better or more immersive than simple stereo. Enabling it removes a lot of the punch from the audio as the soundstage spreads out seemingly in all directions. Rather than feeling big explosions or bullets whizzing by in Battlefield 4, the sounds were subtler and placed all around me.

After using these headphones for dozens of matches online I came to the conclusion that the surround sound was only useful on certain maps, but not all of them. For example in Battlefield 4 I only used it on Operation Locker and Paracel Storm, as those environments were more suited to being able to hear what’s going on around me. In locker it was just helpful to hear sounds echoing since it’s mostly indoors and there’s a lot of explosions, and on Paracel Storm, the actual storm part of the match (near the end of a match a huge storm kicks up) was simply incredible. I’ve been playing Battlefield 4 for three years now and have never experienced that map in the way I did using these headphones. However, on other maps with a lot of tanks and helicopters, I actually preferred stereo sound, as there was more overall punch to the audio.

Overall the audio is very balanced on the Revolver S, never sounding distorted or with too much emphasis in one particular area. Everything sounded crisp and clean at all times. Since there’s no software to install you can’t make custom EQs for certain applications, which is a limitation. However, in my experience it didn’t really need any of that stuff. They sounded great as-is, right out of the box. I toyed with the three presets included on the dongle (you cycle through them by pushing a button), but didn’t find any of them particularly useful, so that seems like a feature that is a pretty big waste.

The noise-cancelling headphone is easy to use as it's detachable, so I took it off when I wasn't gaming, and then attached it when I was. Voice chat in-game was crystal clear, and never too loud or too soft, and sounded basically perfect. I couldn't tell how loud I was, and wished there was a way to monitor that, but all my squad mates said I sounded fine. There is a volume control for the mic on the 7.1 dongle, so if someone said I was too loud I just turned it down a bit and things were fine.

I also tested it on Skype and the person I was talking to was actually surprised at how clear it was, and said, "It sounds like you're standing right next to me." I even took a call with a lot of ambient noise in my apartment including cars whizzing by outside (I live by a busy intersection) but none of that went through on the call. Overall I'd say the microphone is about as good as I've ever experienced.