Amazon Basics Mini USB Condenser Microphone for Online Meeting, Gaming, Podcast - 2 capsules, Black

I now work from home, and purchased this microphone for use in videoconferencing. My existing desktop computer does not have a microphone and the microphone on my webcam is very poor, so I have been dialing in to my videoconferences with my phone so people can hear me. But with this microphone, which now sits on my desk behind my keyboard in front of my monitor, I can connect instantly to my online meetings without having to dial in separately. Once I got the microphone set up as the default mic, it worked flawlessly. The first day I was using it, I asked a coworker if he could hear me and he said it sounded like I was in a recording studio. I'm very pleased with the product. I do wish it had a mute button or an on/off switch, as I end up plugging it in to use it and then unplugging it when my meetings are finished. Would definitely buy again.

Good quality mic. Overall fairly sturdy construction, and the little tripod is a nice touch. Slightly disappointed that it has a micro-USB port, rather than USB-C. Micro-USB is notorious for physically breaking, so be careful with the cable sticking out the back. Also, there's no "cough" mute button, which would have been a simple and extremely helpful addition to the product. Still, for the price, it provides good sound and build quality, so I'm quite happy.

So this was not showing up on my m1 mbp at all. I was confused for months until i finally found time to focus on the issue. I noticed the blue/green light was on but mic just wasnt showing up in mbp options. I removed my ear buds from mic and it still wasnt showing. I then plugged my ear buds into the m1 and boom! The mic now was showing in options. Weird but thats the fix. Ive been using this mic for months on my hackintosh with no issues. I think its a great starting mic, i have no problems with my sound quality when editing and posting videos on youtube. Do i think its the best thing out there? Of course not but for this price point its great.

Nowadays I'm on Zoom calls for most of the day from my laptop in my home office. After a friend complained of the sound quality using the microphone built into the laptop chassis, I ran experiments to find out what was causing it. It seems the onboard microphone must have serious processing to try to filter out the chassis noise (from the fan and other sources), as well as heavy-handed EQ and auto-grain to try to adjust for the fact that a pinhole mounted microphone pointed in the wrong direction is not the best source of clean audio. I looked for a reasonably priced external USB mic and found this one. While waiting for it to arrive, I had temporarily hooked up my ZOOM H4N Pro 4-track recorder via USB as an ultra-high-quality mic (no relation to Zoom the videoconferencing service). The H4N was worlds better than the onboard mic. When the Amazon Basic mic arrived, i swapped it in place of the H4N and ran a few voice recordings thru it vs the the H4N, capturing the audio in Audacity. I compared the frequency response of the recordings, and they looked the same in the graph and sounded the same during playback (note that voice will not push the high frequency limits of any decently designed microphone, unlike recording a violin or cymbals might). The main difference was that I needed to turn the gain on the Amazon Basics mic all the way up to its maximum to reach the same recording level that the H4N achieved at less than 50% gain, so it's clearly less sensitive. This means you'll be hard pressed to overload the mic in typical use, which is using it with a computer in situations where the sound source is very close to the mic. If you're trying to record a sound source that is far away from the mic, you may wish for more gain. It seems well designed for it's intended use, appears to be solidly built, and is performing flawlessly for me. It also has the ability to switch between omni-directional and cardioid pickup patterns with a press of a button on top of the mic, but in the interest of avoiding extraneous reverberation bouncing off the wall and entering the mic from the rear (which would muddy the sound), I have only used it in cardioid mode. I would recommend this for anyone looking for a good sounding, reasonably priced desktop or laptop microphone.

Seemed fine, but now it randomly cuts off so that people lose my audio during meetings. I have to switch to my laptop mic... very disruptive. Expected more from AmazonBasics.

Worked for 3 years, then the plastic on the tripod base simply fell apart, and one leg fell off, making the mic unusable. Wish there was some way to replace the base. Perhaps unreasonable, but my expectation is that things will last longer than that. Other than that, worked well.

This is an excellent USB microphone and is great value for money. Compared directly to the also popular Fifine unit, the Amazon unit wins on sound quality (voice sounds fuller with no eq). The only thing that was better about the Fifine unit was the tripod, which is better quality than what this comes with. NOTE: AT THIS TIME, NEITHER MIC WORKED WITH TEAMS. TEAMS WORKED FOR A MINUTE OR TWO AND THEN TURNED THE LEVEL ALL THE WAY DOWN. Evidently there's some "virtual cable" third party software that "fixes" the issue, but it's too much hassle for the average user. Microsoft needs to wake up and fix this issue!

I bought this microphone to have better quality online meetings, and to start a podcast. The quality is clear, as long as you don't have the volume up too high--otherwise you can create static distortion. It did not have a mute button as the description stated. Also, I would have ranked it higher, but I purchased it in May 2020, and as of December 2020, the plastic piece that surrounds the tripod legs has broken, so it doesn't stand on its own anymore. Hoping a replacement is covered in the warranty.