The HyperX Cloud III wireless is the company’s latest gaming headset, but is wireless connectivity really worth the extra money?
Over the last few years, HyperX has been upgrading its line of PC gaming peripherals, with a number of different releases over the past year and change.
From the Pulsefire Haste 2 and the Armada 27 gaming monitor to the Cloud III’s initial launch as a wired headset, they’ve blown expectations out of the park. Now with a wireless variant in tow, does the headset still manage to hold up?
Key Specs
- Connectivity: 2.4ghz wireless with USB-C dongle & USB-A adapter, USB-C
- Driver diameter: 53mm, Dynamic with Neodymium magnets
- Frequency response: 100Hz, 10Khz
- Weight: 308g without the microphone, 320g with
- Compatibility: PC, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch
- Features: Angled drivers, Detachable 10mm microphone, headset controls
- Price: $169.99
Design
Compared to past releases from HyperX, the Cloud III wireless has been significantly redesigned, although it doesn’t leave behind the iconic look of the brand.
Instead, they’ve opted for a much sleeker design for the headband forks, folding them slightly inwards to allow users to grip the earcups better.
The closed-back earcups and the 53mm drivers are angled, making it so the HyperX Cloud III wireless directs audio straight into your ears. In our testing, the adjustments to each earcup and driver angle have elevated the sound quality significantly compared to our Cloud Alpha Wireless.
HyperX has added more memory foam padding to the Cloud III in both the earcups and headband, making the headset super comfortable for those with a big head — something that we would have liked to see with the Beats Studio Pro headphones we recently reviewed.
The company kept the controls simple on the Cloud III, with just a power and mute button on the left side and a volume scroll wheel on the right. The USB-C charging port is on the left earcup, right below the detachable microphone.
Battery life is phenomenal
HyperX rates the battery life on the Cloud III Wireless as 120 hours while using 50% volume, and we surprisingly got just under that with 110 hours in hour testing with the volume right around 60%.
Battery life on HyperX’s wireless headsets is what makes the company stand out from the rest. A headset with a similar feature set from SteelSeries, the Nova 4 wireless, is rated at just 36 hours on a single charge.
In theory, the Cloud III wireless should get almost seven hours of charge while being plugged in for just 15 minutes. It’s nowhere near the Cloud Alpha Wireless’ 300-hour battery life, but it’s good, nonetheless.
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Features
The biggest feature of the Cloud III wireless is the 53mm angled drivers that provide one of the highest-quality sound stages we’ve experienced yet. It’s even got DTS Headphone X Spatial sound capability.
Outside of this, though, HyperX’s latest offering is rather barebones. There’s no Bluetooth chip and it doesn’t offer a 3.5mm port for better Xbox or handheld system support.
This is disappointing because SteelSeries offers both 3.5mm and Bluetooth connections on their Nova 7 wireless for just $10 more than the HyperX Cloud III Wireless.
Gaming performance
HyperX knocked it out of the park with the audio quality on the Cloud III Wireless, largely thanks to the angled drivers directing sound straight into your ear canal.
We used it on Forza Horizon 5 and Valorant for several hours at a time, and the added memory foam padding on the earcups and headband makes the headset super comfortable.
Unfortunately, the 10mm microphone on the Cloud III Wireless leaves more to be desired. In our testing, it picked up a fair bit of background noise and is simply outperformed by SteelSeries’ headsets.
Should you buy it?
The HyperX Cloud III Wireless is a perfectly suitable gaming headset that offers absolutely killer sound that others in its price range sometimes struggle to achieve.
Unfortunately, at a $70 markup from the more accessible wired version, it’s hard to recommend since it doesn’t offer anything else outside of cutting the cord. HyperX will likely alleviate this issue with a sale down the line, but at full price, it’s just too much.
The Verdict: 3/5
The HyperX Cloud III Wireless offers crisp audio across the board, but with a massive price hike and mediocre microphone quality, they’re just hard to recommend.