Cooler Master MH752 Gaming Headset Review
In the grand style of HyperX licensing the Takstar Pro 80 and making a million gaming headsets out of it, Cooler Master has licensed the mostly- good Takstar Pro 82 and made two gaming headsets out of it.
The MH752 keeps the same basic design from that budget OEM headphone, but adds better materials, a refined easier-to-listen-to sound, and a competent microphone, while also removing the fun bass sliders.
If you’re picky about audio reproduction and don’t mind the slightly outdated feature set, you’d be hard-pressed to do better in the sub-$100 gaming headset market.
The Cooler Master MH752 is a $100 closed back gaming headset that includes its own small USB sound card, a removable cable and boom mic, and a slightly cheap-feeling velvet bag. It’s all packaged in a thick box that’s very reminiscent of the original HyperX Cloud II box, with a deep inset foam and nice protective materials.
If you don’t want the USB sound card and would prefer a cable with an in-line analog volume control, then you could opt for the $80 MH751, which is identical save for the swapped cable and missing sound card.
Both of these headsets regularly go on sale for less than their retail prices, and the best way to get them is either through Cooler Master directly or through online retailers. I have yet to see a single unit in any of the electronics stores in my area.
The MH752 sounds a whole lot like a Takstar Pro 82, only easier on the ears and lacking the fun bass adjustment feature that allowed me to bloat up and eventually ruin the sound.
I’m pretty impressed with the sound of these, and if you don’t like them, it’ll be more down to your personal tastes than any big fault of the audio reproduction.
They have a detailed, accurate, relatively neutral sound signature for a gaming headset at this price. It’s got just enough bass to represent those frequencies correctly, a natural mid range with realistic-sounding vocals, and treble that’s south of the fatigue line unless you really crank up the volume.
In fact, this is a pretty competent facsimile of the type of sound I’d expect from a pair of $99 studio headphones, and the cleanliness of the treble is a little bit like the old Audio-Technica MSR7, but not quite as bristling.
In games, you’ll hear sounds exactly as they were mixed, without any of the fun explosion emphasis or footsteps focus some other headsets will give you out of the box. Soundstage in particular is surprisingly good for a closed back headset, with a center image that sits forward of my head, and enough accuracy in width and imaging that positional awareness isn’t a problem.
It’s a signature that’s similar to the non-Pro Arctis series, but I think the MH571 sounds a bit better/cleaner than those headsets. The HyperX family does a better job of splitting the difference between fun and neutral, with punchier bass tones that don’t intrude too much into the rest of the mix. Plantronics shoots for this same sort of target in their RIG series, but I slightly prefer the sound of the MH752.
I can’t throw a real complaint at the audio reproduction here for the price of the headset.
The treble can sound a little honky at times, but it’s far more controlled than the original Pro 82. The mids are wonderful. The soundstage is nice for this type of design. The bass is the only area I sometimes find lacking, not because anything is missing, but because it’s fun to have a little more oomph than this in a gaming product.
Like the Pro 82, the comfort here is exceptional.
I have a large-ish head, and I usually have to extend adjustments almost all the way out to get headsets to fit, but with the MH752 I only have to use half the adjustment range. Since it fits me at 5 out of 10 clicks, it should fit just about anyone correctly.
The ear pads use a soft medium density memory foam, and the leatherette covering them is pretty nice. It’s not as eerily soft as the leatherette on the Cloud Alpha pads, which are still the benchmark for this type of material.
Headband padding is almost non-existent, but that’s okay because the weight of the headset is well-balanced. Even after multiple 3+ hour sessions, I didn’t develop a hot spot on the top of my head.
The drivers are angled and the pad openings are big enough that your whole ear should rest comfortably inside. If your ears do smack into the back of the chamber, there’s a very soft piece of foam in there that’s also probably helping to cut down the treble response a bit.
Takstar previously built many of HyperX’s Cloud models, so-called because of their comfort. The MH752 lives up to this same standard.
I didn’t like many of the build decisions on the original Pro 82. This model fixes some of them.
To get the bad out of the way first, the ear pads are still glued to plastic rings that are then clipped firmly onto the headset. So changing them out is far more difficult than on most other products.
Cooler Master doesn’t seem to sell full pad assemblies or the rings separately, so if you do decide to pry the mounting rings off, you’ll then have to rip off the glued pads if you want to use the rings for other pads, or stretch a new pad over the frame of the ear cup itself.
This is still baffling to me, just as it was when I first reviewed the Pro 82. The Cloud II/Takstar Pro 80 had easily removable and replaceable pads. Most other gaming headsets at this price point have easily removable pads. It’s weird to see this holdover from the very old days of gaming and audio gear.
You can rotate the ear cups flat…but like the Pro 82, they still fold the wrong way to put these around your neck. The speaker drivers will face up towards the ceiling when you rotate the cups. Another strange choice. Usually, if one-direction swivels are implemented, they turn the cups the opposite way, like on the Audio-Technica M40X.
Everything else here is a step up from its Pro 82 predecessor. The ear cup support forks are still hollow, but they’re now covered in a rubberized material that makes them more sturdy. The backs of the ear cups are a mix of fake sandblasted aluminum and rubberized plastic. The chromed plastic along the headband is now matte. The old 2.5mm connection for the cable is now a robust locking 3.5mm outlet.
The adjustment mechanisms are slightly more clicky than on my old Pro 82 and do a great job of holding their positions.
Everything except the still-glued pads is a small step up, build-wise. Sometimes, the rubberized plastic of the forks will make a rubbing sound as it moves against the ear cups at the rotation point when I go to put the headset on, but I’ve easily accepted that over the last several days because I’m happy about these better materials.
The design is still a clone of the Sony MDR-1A, and it’s understated enough to wear in public. The near-total lack of branding is an impressive choice for Cooler Master to make. If people want to know what kind of headphones you’re wearing, they’ll have to ask you.
They still don’t feel as robust or tank-like in the hands as many other gaming headsets/studio headphones that use more metal in their designs. Rubberized plastic is still plastic. But this is a noticeable step up from the Pro 82 and that’s impressive.
As long as you’re planning to use these in a normal manner and not hurl them into walls or your floor, they should hold up just fine. I’ve been carrying mine around in my bag for almost a week and they’ve done well.
The braided cable is very nice and has super thick robust plugs on the end. The locking mechanism for the headset side means that finding a replacement might be a little difficult, but a thin/deep standard 3.5mm cable should fit, like the one for the Cloud Alpha.
Cooler Master claims the microphone is “Omni-Directional,” but it does a good job of not picking up noise from every direction and focusing on the voice, so I suspect that it’s not really omni-directional at all. It performs quite well for the price point, and has a little less noise suppression than HyperX’s microphones. You can hear some mic tests I recorded here.
Apologies for getting the name of the headset totally wrong in the loud room test. The coffee shop was only loud for a brief window before it got a little slow, and I didn’t have another good moment of loudness to re-record it.
If you’re going into the MH752 hoping that its 7.1 dongle will give you equivalent processing to other 7.1 headset systems…prepare for disappointment. The little sound card here is the exact same one from the HyperX Cloud II, but with the buttons in slightly different places. I reviewed that older dongle over here.
My thoughts on it are the same as they were in that review.
It’s still a competent stereo DAC/Amp that allows you to have potentially easier access to a headset port, and it still has a stupid shirt clip on the back and tends to slide around on my desk. The “7.1” is really just a stereo soundstage expansion effect. It makes no use of the 7.1 data from your PC games, and is a 100 percent stereo device. The expansion effect is fine for some games and terrible for others.
Calling this a 7.1 sound card or headset is a direct marketing lie. You’ll need to use Windows Sonic, Dolby Atmos, Razer Surround, or another software solution if you want to take your 7.1 game audio and process it for simulated binaural headphone listening. The 7.1 button here might have been better used to add a small bass boost to the headset.
The last extra is a crushed velvet carry bag that picks up dust the second you look at it. It’s an okay bag.
If you’re an audiophile or a fan of accurate audio reproduction, and you want a good “jack-of-all-trades” gaming headset, this is an excellent choice. It’s also an excellent “first step into high quality audio” sort of product.
But then, so are a lot of other already-existing gaming products, like the Cloud II, Cloud Alpha, RIG 400, Logitech G Pro, Steelseries Arctis, and others. This headset also doesn’t have true 7.1 audio processing, nor does it feature RGB lights.
Then there’s the issue of cheaper wireless headsets, a market that’s ripe with expansion. Both the Cloud Stinger Wireless and Corsair HS70 offer good audio and wireless performance at a comparable price.
As a weird audio person who also loves video games, I love this headset. But it’s not as truly market-crushing now as it would have been five years ago. Cooler Master is the fifth or sixth company to build a better HyperX Cloud II, not the first.
The Takstar Pro 82 had a super-hyped fan base that once passively attacked me for…liking the headphones. This is a better product than that one, and a choice you can feel happy about if you go for it. But I wouldn’t blame you for picking any of the other great options at this price either. This price point is so crowded that you could almost throw a dart and get a good headset.
If you like accuracy and comfort over “modern features,” the MH752 is a good solid pick. But if you love bass bass bass and want true surround processing and RGB lights…then maybe pick something else.
Also the name is terrible. It’s a letter and number jumble that Sony would be proud of. I keep thinking it’s called the HS752 instead of the MH752, because at least in Corsair’s lineup “HS” means headset. I have no idea what MH means.
Cooler Master MH752 Gaming Headset Review
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