You can find some pretty good gaming headsets for just under $50. Kingston has one such option in the HyperX Cloud Stinger, a $49.99 wired gaming headset that feels comfortable and offers solid audio performance and very good microphone quality. You can get a slightly better-sounding headset by spending a bit more, but if you're on a strict budget, the Cloud Stinger is an excellent choice.

Design

The Cloud Stinger ($49.99 at Amazon) is a very plain headset, with an all-black, all-plastic design that fits in line with its budget price. It doesn't feel cheap at all, but it does little to catch your eye or seem particularly rugged or complex in its construction. The synthetic leather over-ear earpads and headband padding are soft and comfortable, but not quite as thick as the earpads on the Razer Kraken Pro V2 , and nowhere near as luxurious as the Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament Headset ($119.99 at Amazon) . The only color on the headset comes from the painted red HyperX logos on the outsides of each earcup.

Both the boom microphone and headset cable are permanently attached to the left earcup. The mic rests on a flexible rubber boom arm that flips down 90 degrees in only one direction, so you can't swap sides by turning the headset around. The headset cable is four feet long and ends in a single four-pole 3.5mm plug that will work with all modern game consoles and handhelds, along with most mobile devices and some laptops. HyperX includes a five-foot extension cable that splits into two three-pole 3.5mm plugs, for use with computers and notebooks with separate headphone and microphone inputs.

A slider on the underside of the right earcup controls volume mechanically, letting you adjust it separately from your connected device. There's no inline remote or microphone mute button, but the mic automatically mutes when you flip it up.

Music Performance

While it's primarily a gaming headset, the Cloud Stinger plays music fairly well. It handled our bass test track, The Knife's "Silent Shout," without a hint of distortion even at maximum volumes. It doesn't reach too deep into the sub-bass realm, however; both the kick drum and bass synth hits lack the powerful head-shaking thump that headphones with strong low-end reproduce them with. There's some force in the lows and low-mids, but there isn't any subwoofer-like rumble behind them.

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Yes' "Roundabout" further reflects the Cloud Stinger's emphasis on mids (and low-mids and high-mids) over any real extreme frequency response. The acoustic guitar plucks in the opening sound clean, but they lack much of the texture of the strings that you get from headphones with greater and more subtle high-frequency response. Similarly, the electric slap bass gets a good amount of low-mid thump, but nothing that reaches really deep into the low frequencies. The Logitech G231 Prodigy shows better response across the board, with a slightly stronger reach into the lower and higher frequencies.

Game Performance and Voice Quality

For gaming, this audio signature works very well. I played Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare on the PlayStation 4, and the strong just-above-sub-bass lows give the different guns plenty of punch. Gunshots and explosions won't rattle your skull with their vibrations, but you'll definitely stay aware of them. Even during intense combat, voice cues and barked orders come through clearly thanks to strong high-mid presence.

As a mostly single player game with no voice chat, Nioh on the PlayStation 4 doesn't need a headset. That said, the atmospheric music and various sound effects of soldiers, demons, bones, and steel clashing against each other came through clearly. At maximum volume, it's a powerful sound that adds to the immersion of your missions, even without reproducing very low or very high frequencies.

The Cloud Stinger's microphone similarly sounds very good for a budget headset. The long, stiff boom arm keeps the mic far enough away that it doesn't pick up any popping or make certain syllables sound overly sibilant. Speech comes through clearly, and while it doesn't offer the sensitive, powerful performance of dedicated microphones, the headset can work well for both voice chat in games and calling into podcasts.

Conclusions

The Kingston HyperX Cloud Stinger is an affordable wireless headset that offers very satisfying performance for the price. It's one of the best sub-$50 headsets out there, and feels very comfortable on the head. If you can spare an additional $20, you should really get the Logitech G231 Prodigy for its superior sound, but if your budget tops out at $50, the Stinger is a very solid choice. If money is no object, the Turtle Beach Elite Pro Tournament Headset costs three times as much as the Cloud Stinger, but it's the best-performing, best-feeling wired headset we've tested.

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