HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 Review

Normally, when HyperX launches a new product, the Target and Best Buy locations in my area stock it almost immediately on release day. Way back when I would take an occasional company-provided review unit, as was the case with the Cloud Orbit S, they even shelved and sold the final product before the review embargo, I signed had expired.

That was frustrating.

Now, I find myself missing that old HyperX urgency. No one nearby stocked the Cloud Stinger 2 at release — a brilliant headset that I think is one of the best budget models in a long time. You can read my original review of it here. I saw the headset launch online early on in October, and waited a few weeks for it to show up at retail, expecting I’d be able to pick one up easily so I could review it.

It never showed up, so I was forced to order one online to sate my curiosity. But I kept monitoring the local retail situation anyway just for kicks. The Cloud Stinger 2 family has three different models, a smart step downwards from the roughly 8 thousand models in the previous generation, so I thought that surely at least one version would show up at one of my local stores before too long. They’d have to stock them before the lucrative holiday season, right?

No. Apparently not.

I didn’t see a single Cloud Stinger 2 in any nearby store until yesterday, where I spotted exactly one unit of the middle $50 wired model sitting all by itself on a random overstock shelf at my local Best Buy. Here is a picture I took of it.

Cloud Stinger 2 Headset sitting on a random overstock shelf in a Best Buy location.

It’s ridiculous that it took this long for such a great headset to show up in a local electronics outlet, and silly that it’s not shelved in the proper main HyperX area. I’ve had a few comments on social media after my review from other people saying they also couldn’t find it easily at retail. It first launched four months ago, and we are now well outside the standard holiday buying window where budget headsets are in high demand. During this whole period, online stock has remained consistent, with the entire headset family available both from Amazon US and HyperX’s online store.

It would be simple to guess that this was down to supply chain issues, “inflation,” or some other nefarious economic factor that’s easy to blame during these particular times. However, I personally think that something else happened here.

Just a few paragraphs ago, I mentioned that the original Cloud Stinger had a nightmarish amount of models within its product family. I wasn’t kidding. HyperX spent years releasing different iterations, colors, and feature-tweaks for their original $50 budget classic, and it got to be a huge mess of options. In case you didn’t click through to that other story, just look at this absurd comparison chart they used to have on their web site:

An absurd chart showing many different HyperX Cloud Stinger 1 models.

That chart actually keeps going further to the right, with more colors and different models down there, like this pink model I once reviewed.

So, with that huge glut of products in the market, my educated guess is that local retailers refused to stock any new Stinger 2 models until more of the Stinger 1’s had sold out, and also that HyperX/HP didn’t want to pay to recall all that unsold inventory. So customers have had to sit for months looking at old product, maybe not even realizing that a new superior option was out there.

The click numbers from my original review certainly seem to indicate that this headset had no hype around it. Usually a review of a new-release headset within its launch window does pretty well for me, even just from people Googling around looking for impressions. However, my Stinger 2 review kind of fell on its face, doing a fraction of the traffic I normally get.

The first number there is raw article clicks, and the second is people who made it to the end of the story. I would have expected around five times those numbers based on other comparable articles and the amount of time it has been up, not to mention the usual frenzy of the Christmas tech season.

I featured the headset again in my “Favorite Budget Headsets of the Year” roundup, and that article did much better — but the Stinger 2 has less retail availability compared to all the other products there, so it probably didn’t see much sales bump, if any.

I don’t have any vested interest in this headset doing well or falling on its face (I make no money from this or any product and I haven’t been compensated or asked by HyperX to write this), but it just sucks to see the launch of something I like botched so badly. The Stinger 2 is a much better budget choice than most of the other stuff out there in its price range, and as someone who tries to approach tech content from a pro-consumer angle, it’s absolutely something that gaming audio fans should be easily able to buy.

Originally, I planned to use the Cloud Stinger 2 as my only headset for six months and then write a follow-up article about my experience. Its sound, comfort, and mic performance are good enough that I don’t really need anything better, but I wanted to see how its build held up over that time. Unfortunately, when interest in my original review cratered, I decided to shelve that follow-up.

Next, I planned to buy and review the wireless version of the headset when it hit wide retail availability, because I was sure that would happen before Christmas. Instead, I was super wrong about that, and I still haven’t seen any Stinger 2’s in a store other than the lone wired model above.

I’ve never seen HyperX under-ship a new product like this before, and it’s doubly surprising now that they are backed by the vast resources of HP after the buyout a couple of years ago. The Stinger 2 family is an excellent replacement that improves on the original in every way — save for maybe the new industrial design that might not be to everyone’s aesthetic taste. If I were in their position, I’d be working quickly to get all those old Stinger models off the shelves and hype up this new one.

HyperX made a name for themselves selling solid affordable high performance alternatives to the other brands, and the Cloud Stinger 2 is a perfect example of that classic ethos. I’m hopeful that someday it’ll actually be a product people can see and purchase in various places.

Between this and their recent goofy “fix” for driver latency issues, I’m a little bit cross about the current state of HyperX. I know that they can do so much better.