The Kingston HyperX Cloud Stinger impressed us last year with very strong performance and a solid design for a modest $50. The Cloud Alpha is the company's higher-end wired gaming headset. It's twice as expensive at $99.99, but features a nicer build, more powerful bass, and an improved, removable boom mic that makes it easier to use the headset as standard headphones when you're not gaming. It offers very good sound, though the Astro Gaming A10 has similar audio performance for just over half the price, making it our Editors' Choice.
 

 Design

 The Cloud Alpha is both sturdy and plush, with soft, well-padded faux leather over-ear earpads. The headset's frame is red anodized aluminum, which attaches to each earcup in a skeletal U-shaped strut that lets them pivot up and down. The frame is solid all the way from one earcup to the other, which means the headset can't fold down for easier storage. Red stitching on the headband and red HyperX logos on the back of each black plastic earcup complement the red aluminum of the frame, giving the headset a stylish but not overwhelming aesthetic.
 

 The headset's earcups are minimalist in design, with few connections and no physical controls. Each earcup connects to the other through a short braided cable that disappears into the headband padding and remains unobtrusive while wearing the headset. The left earcup holds two 3.5mm ports on the bottom edge for connecting to your gaming device and attaching the removable boom mic.

 Microphone and Accessories
 

The boom mic is a simple capsule mounted on a flexible metal arm, with a foam wind filter on the end. While it doesn't look like much, it sounded good in our tests, picking up my voice clearly once I found the best position for it. It can get very sibilant even with the wind filter if you put it too close to your mouth, but at a few inches from your chin it's nice and clean.

 Besides the boom mic, the Cloud Alpha includes a four-foot fabric-wrapped cable with an in-line remote that adjusts the volume and mutes the microphone, a second cable with two 3.5mm connectors for use with PCs with separate headphone and microphone jacks, and a carrying pouch. The volume dial on the remote is mechanical, and functions separately from your connected device.

 As a stereo headset with 3.5mm connectors, the Cloud Alpha can work with nearly any gaming device. You can plug it into your Xbox One controller, PlayStation 4 controller, Nintendo Switch (in portable mode), smartphone, tablet, or PC easily. As with most 3.5mm headsets, the Cloud Alpha has no simulated surround sound or other processing features.
 

 Music Performance

 Music comes through clearly on the Cloud Alpha, with plenty of low-end power when it's present in the mix. At maximum (and unsafe) volumes, the headset played our bass test track, The Knife's "Silent Shout," without a hint of distortion. It reproduced the bass synth notes and kick drum hits with enough force to potentially hurt your ears, and dialing back the volume made it much easier to tolerate while keeping the low-end thump in the forefront.
 

 Fairly strong high frequency response balances out the powerful bass, though it lacks a bit of treble finesse. The bagpipes in The Real McKenzies' "Chip" are sharp and harsh against the driving guitar and drums, but they miss that treble edge that keeps them in the front of the mix and not sitting back against the drums. Paul McKenzie's raspy vocals take the spotlight, as they should, even if the flinty brogue in his voice isn't quite as crisp as it could be. It's a bass-forward balance that doesn't significantly hurt the dense track, but doesn't treat the higher frequencies with as much care as it should.
 

 Gaming Performance
 

Games sound good on the Cloud Alpha, through its 50mm stereo drivers. Since it's an analog headset, the Cloud Alpha doesn't offer any simulated surround sound or other audio processing features. However, its stereo sound comes through with plenty of power and clarity, and we've yet to hear a headset with simulated surround that offers an audible tactical advantage; the feature can help headsets sound bigger than stereo mixing does, but it won't help you in your games.

 Overwatch comes through clearly on the headset. Junkrat's bombs sound punchy without getting any extra low frequency response added to their effect, while the game's sweeping orchestral score gets lots of bass gravitas. Gunfire can be heard clearly, and vocal cues from other characters are easily discernible in the middle of combat.

 Team deathmatches in Doom have enough force to give the rocket explosions and machine gun shots some presence, but they won't rattle your head thanks to the game's mixing that focuses on low-mid punch rather than sub-bass rumble. This leaves plenty of room for tracking footsteps and the distant sounds of combat, since it doesn't have to wrestle with the low end for your attention. The stereo mix on the game offers a decent sense of lateral direction, but again you're not going to get very effective directional imaging from any headset due to the stereo, two-driver nature of almost all of them.
 

 Conclusions
 

The Kingston HyperX Cloud Alpha is a very good wired gaming headset. It doesn't do anything fancy, but its excellent build quality and strong audio performance make it a compelling purchase. It's a strong pick if your budget hovers around $100, but the Astro Gaming A10 presents a better value at $60 despite not having quite as nice of a build. If you can afford to splurge, meanwhile, the Turtle Beach Elite Pro and Beyerdynamic Custom Game are excellent headsets, but they're twice as expensive, without the benefit of wireless convenience to help justify the price.