For some time now I kept finding little pieces of rubbery black stuff on my floor and on my body. At first I figured it was my chair since it is getting up there in age, but I wrapped it in a cover and found no openings. Then one day I picked up my Arctis 1 headset, took a close look at the earpads, and realized they were the ones flaking apart. It was time to replace them.
I thought about just getting new headphones, but the Arctis has served me well and there was no real reason to scrap them over worn cushions. So I started looking at earpad replacements and came across Wicked Cushions after someone on Amazon posted pictures showing how quickly a competing pair had fallen apart and recommended these as the better option. That was enough for me to give them a shot.
I went with the Wicked Cushions WC Freeze Hybrid Fabric Cooling Gel Replacement Earpads in Speedracer Cyan. Despite the name, these do generate some heat when on your face — that seems to be the nature of cushions like these regardless of brand. That said, sweat has not been much of an issue during normal use. They are big and thick, spaced out just right in a way that distributes weight evenly with no painful pressure points. No squeezing, no heaviness. They are compatible with a wide range of headsets including HyperX Cloud, Steelseries Arctis, ATH M50X and Turtle Beach Stealth among others, and swapping them out was straightforward and easy.
At around thirty dollars they are not exactly cheap for what they are, but three years later they still look practically new despite hours and hours of gaming. Lightly used at most. That kind of durability justifies the price and then some. This was a solid investment and I would absolutely buy them again.
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