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Beyerdynamic MMX 100 Gaming Headset Review
The gaming headset market changed overnight with the launch and success of the HyperX Cloud family. The Cloud II, Cloud Alpha, and their wireless versions are now quite popular — but their path to the market was long and winding, and indisputably tangled up with the design of Beyerdynamic’s studio headphones.
You see, the main HyperX Cloud headset isn’t actually an “original” product; it’s actually an OEM headphone with a microphone tacked onto it. OEM means “original equipment manufacturer,” and it describes a number of companies all over the world that secretly make some of the branded products you see out there. OEM companies will design a thing, then work with other brands who make tweaks and changes and add their own logos to craft a finalized product.
The OEM headphone buried underneath the HyperX Cloud is the Takstar Pro 80, which is itself a clone of Beyerdynamic’s DT770 Pro 80 Ohm edition (hence the name). Takstar’s headphone copied the aluminum fork design and the headband shape, and even managed to come pretty close to the same sound performance. A company called Q-Pad licensed that headphone and slapped a microphone onto it and called it the Q-Pad QH90. Then HyperX licensed that headset and made a few more tweaks, and the legendary HyperX Cloud was born.
So yes, the very sound performance and industrial design that HyperX has rode into mass success and a huge HP acquisition were both copied from Beyerdynamic. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for the heralded German audio company to watch this happen. Beyerdynamic’s studio headphones are excellent, but they don’t always sell well outside the professional audio and enthusiast markets.
If I’d been watching for over a half decade while another company had mainstream success in the gaming market with a copy of my design, I’d have been seething. Beyerdynamic has tried a couple of times to break into the gaming space in the past with their MMX family of products (like the MMX 300), but they’ve always just combined of one of their studio headphones with one of their pro headset mics. These combos perform well, but always cost way more than the Best-Buy-Shelf-Friendly HyperX products.
