It’s been months since I first reviewed the HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless headset (10/10, WIRED Recommends). And I’m still at a loss for how it pulls off its greatest trick: battery life that lasts ten times longer than the competition. And now they’re on sale for the cheapest we’ve seen.
That means now is a great time to snag a pair of headphones that you barely ever have to return to a charging cable.
When I first got these headphones to review, I was skeptical. Most wireless gaming headsets max out at around 30 hours of battery life (and many get way below that.) HyperX was claiming these get three hundred hours.
So, I decided to test them. And after playing non-stop at 50 percent volume, starting from 100% percent charge, I found that three hundred wasn’t quite accurate. In my test, they actually got 348 hours. These headphones overshot their estimated battery life by more than the entirety of most other headsets’ best possible use cases.
I assumed there must be something else wrong with them, but no. They’re comfortable, they get deep, rich sound, and even though they lack active noise cancellation, they blocked out sound enough naturally. I put them on a friend and even though I was speaking directly to him in front of his face, he couldn’t hear me.
The only downside is they lack Bluetooth or other wireless options, but since those sacrifices were likely part of what makes the 300-hour battery possible (at least that’s the best guess according to our friends over at iFixit), we’ll allow it.
