Taking a break from its evil capitalist world conquering Agenda, Amazon has recently dipped its toes into the world of affordable USB microphones.
There are a couple of models available, but this time around i’m checking out its smaller desktop mini USB condenser microphone.
Costing a mere 33 pounds and 65 pence at the time of purchase, the mic arrived in a fairly nondescript brown box with the AmazonBasics logo emblazoned on the side.
In the box, pickings are slim.
You’ve got the microphone itself, which is all plastic construction – to be expected at this price point – but it does feel particularly cheap and almost flimsy.
The grille is slightly better – it is metal, not plastic and definitely feels a lot sturdier.
This thing is really light, like really light, which adds to its cheap and cheerful feel overall.
There’s a built in mount on the bottom of the microphone with a 5/8 inch connection so you can pop it onto a mic stand if you wish.
There are no controls to speak of on the mic, save for a single mute button, and a LED which activates when the mic is muted – that’s it. Theres also a standard mini-USB input on the back.
It comes with a fairly cheap feeling (but functional) stand and a mini-USB to USB-A cable too.
The Amazon basics desktop mini USB microphone records at a sample rate of 48kHz at 16 bit. It has a frequency response of 50Hz to 18kHz, though the Amazon listing has this as 50Hz to 20kHz.
Find out how the Microphone sounds and discover exactly what comes in the box in the video below:
Punching Above Its Weight
Despite the bad first impression that you get from the budget build quality of the AmazonBasics Desktop Mini Condenser Microphone , this thing sounds incredible for its price point.
Like, really really good – Amazon are placing this model squarely in the same ball park as other popular budget USB mics like the Blue Snowball or the Samson Meteor microphone and while it comes in cheaper than either of them, it comes very close to matching their sound quality.
There’s a surprising lack of noise from it’s on board pre amp and the mic has a good amount of gain to it considering there are no on-board controls to speak of.
One thing I did notice is that it’s really bad at dealing with plosives, so you’ll absolutely want to stick a pop filter in front of it before speaking or singing into it.
You’ll get fairly flat, no frills recordings from it and it definitely deals with recording vocals, be it spoken or sung, better than it does guitars or other instruments. Not to say it sounds bad, it’s just doesn’t have a particularly exciting personality to it.
