Blue Yeti USB Microphone

I've used this microphone for approximately 2 years now and it is great! The audio quality, improved significantly by utilising the manufacturer software is really clear and crisp. The microphone can be quite sensitive to pops, esses and background noise so best to use a filter of sorts (through software) to minimise non-human sounds. The quality of the product is great. It is robust and has no dints, dings or scratches despite being dropped quite a few times. My only issue lies with the positioning of the USB port which is at the base of the microphone (not to be confused with the stand - which is detatchable) which can become disfigured or damaged over time due to the USB cable pulling or being tensed against one side. This problem could be resolved with a better USB cable angled at 90 degrees when entering the base of the microphone. Otherwise; Looks great, connects to the computer with minimal effort and has plenty of features that will have you up and going in no time.

My Yeti was bought for a static placement with podcasting / voice over / audible books type use in mind. It was chosen after a great deal of research and deliberation, both on and off the internet. During these investigations the price dropped dramatically and my choice became a very easy one - I am now the owner of my very own Yeti. So, am I happy with my decision now that I have used it for real? Absolutely - it's a great piece of audio equipment. It is not just really solid, and physically heavy, it captures sound with wonderful clarity - the most important function. The working bit of the Yeti is attached by two screws to the heavy, solid, stylish stand which has a neoprene type mat affixed the the bottom. Although it can be tilted on the stand, since it is a side-faced mic (i.e. the mics are designed to pick up best from the sides), there is no real advantage to this except it does make is easier to insert the USB & headphone connections. The 'Blue Thepop Filter', bought separately, fixes nicely to the back of the stand (with a small bit of rubber backed carpet or mouse mat - see my review of Thepop filter) allowing the metal pop filter to swing round gracefully from the back to a functional position in front of the mic. The stand itself, in spite of the mat, will easily pick up and transmit sound from any surface it is placed on - as such mics do. For this reason mine is placed on a separate wheeled chest of drawers next to my desk. It is isolated from my working desk top and it works well from there. Other people use anglepoise type arms and isolation cradles to solve this problem but my unit works for me and uses what I already have. Apart from the sound quality (though if this was not very good to start with the rest would not be valid) the multiple pick up patterns are a positive advantage. Cardioid for front of mic sources, bidirectional for face to face across the mic, stereo for left / right placement of sources, omnidirectional for round table meetings etc. Just select the pattern required using the knob at the back and 'go' - they all work well. The sensitivity of the mic(s) is adjustable via the gain control knob on the rear of the mic. This is something you'll need to test properly before serious use. Too much gain and it'll pick up everything - even things you cannot 'hear' at the time. Too little gain and you have the reverse. There is no shortcut, you have to adjust this for/in real life situations - unfortunately the Yeti cannot predict which level of sound you require and for what purpose. One element understated in the literature is the quality of the headphone playback output from the Yeti. Headphones sound great through the Yeti ... even good ones sound better. An excellent piece of equipment well suited to its purpose.

By far the best mic I've owned & used up till now. As a YouTuber & Livestreamer on Twitch i'm always looking to improve the quality of my recordings & videos as best as I can but also be on a budget. For me the next step was to find a decent mic to help with my audio & the Blue Yeti has met all of my needs perfectly. I had tried other mics in the past before my Yeti but this mic exceeds all of them & for not a lot of money either. The mic itself is great & the build quality is of a really high standard, its pretty much ready to go straight out the box. One thing I really liked is that you have a few settings on the mic itself so it can capture sound from different directions or help block surrounding sounds by the twist of a switch on the back. The settings are... STEREO. Front/360 sound capture. best for vocals, choirs & instruments. CARDIOID. Forward only sound, this is what I use. best for podcasts, voiceovers, solo vocals & solo instruments. also helps block surrounding noise that isn't coming directly from the front of the mic OMNIDIRECTIONAL. Full 360 sound capture. best for conference calls, field recording & live events. BIDIRECTIONAL. front & back sound capture, best for interviews, duel podcasts & vocal duets. The mic also comes with a very strong & sturdy desktop stand but for me personally I decided to go with a actual mic stand so I can adjust height & move it around. Its really easy to swap over if you want to do the same, you just need to undo the two screws on the side, then the mic just screws on to the stand or boom arm in the thread that's on the bottom of the Yeti, also the stand I bought was just a normal generic mic stand from a music shop, so no special size threads or anything stupid like that. I bought my Yeti mic at the end of 2014 so as of now I've been using it for nearly two years & in that time I've made around 50+ videos with voiceovers for my YouTube channel & done over 1000+ hours of livestreaming with the Yeti to my Twitch channel, most of my live shows can last for anything up to 12hours each so I really put my Yeti to the test every weekend so i know its good quality & will last you a long time. Even now almost two years after my purchase it shows no signs of wear or lost any performance in sound quality. Very happy with my purchase, would buy again & recommend to others.

Short review: Really good product, build and sound quality is good. Gain and environment setting are very useful. Note that the microphone is technically a headset as there is a 3.5mm jack on the bottom which sound (and your own voice) is/can be outputted through. (FOR ANYONE TRYING TO USE WITH AN ASTRO MIXAMP OR SIMILAR DEVICE SEE FULL REVIEW BELOW) Long review: I previously owned a Blue Microphones Snowball Ice, and I loved it. I actually sold it to a friend in order to buy a Yeti, as he was wanting to get a new microphone, and I was wanting to upgrade. At full price, you really need to be using your mic on a very regular basis, and with need for the extra features a Blue Yeti provides to make it a worthwhile investment, in my opinion. However, I managed to pick one up on sale during black friday, which is what swayed me to buy one. The build quality is very good, as you would expect from a Blue Microphones product. The sound quality (or so I'm assured by my friends) is very good as well (also as expected from Blue). The stand that comes with the microphone is actually surprisingly heavy, and would no doubt keep the microphone still and secure. However I have a boom arm from my previous setup with the Snowball, and so immediately out of the box removed the stand and setup the mic on that. The dial on the front of the mic just adjusts the volume of sound outputted through the 3.5mm jack on the bottom, which was something I had not really realized was built in. Also situated on the front is a simple toggle mute button with LED indicator. On the back of the device are two dials. The top is a simple gain dial, allowing the user to raise or lower the volume of their voice to be broadcast. Generally I have mine set about halfway, when using the mic around 6-12 inches away from me. The lower dial on the back is the environment settings. This allows the user to run the mic in different modes, depending upon the application they are using it for. I keep mine in stereo mode, which picks up audio from all around, but outputs through both left and right channels. There are 3 other modes; cardioid to pick up sound from in front of the mic. Omnidirectional to pick up sound from all around but output it so that you can tell where it was recorded from. Bidirectional to pick up sound from the front and back which is useful if two people are using the mic. There is a handy picture guide in the book which explains what each mode does and what applications it is useful for. For anyone trying to use the Blue Yeti with an Astro Mixamp on a PS4: I didn't realize when i bought the mic, that technically it counts as a headset. This means that when trying to use it on the PS4, chat audio must be outputted through the mic (the 3.5mm jack on the bottom). This caused an issue as I wanted my Yeti to be the mic in, but the chat audio to be outputted to the Mixamp so that i could balance it against game audio. The workaround I found, was to use the Yeti as the input and output on the PS4, then plug one end of a 3.5mm audio cable into the bottom of the Yeti, the other end into the 2.5mm socket on the bottom of the mixamp (this requires an adapter). This will then allow you to balance chat volume on the front of the yeti, and game audio on the mixamp.

I felt this was a very good mic. I brought it to record my voice and was quite easy to set up. You can plug it in and use it straight away in any recording software. However, I record in OBS and have set up filters for the mic to improve the audio and reduce the background noise. Mic has multiple control knobs on the mic, one increases headphone volume, one increases mic volume (gain) there is a dial that changes where the mic picks up sound from, have a look into which best suits you and which each means, but for my purposes, it works great. It does use the old style usb to micro usb, which is relatively uncommon, but connects well. Overall the mic is really good, looks sleek, but my only criticism is the stand it comes with, while sturdy, where it screws into the mic comes loose quickly without moving it, meaning the mic can turn unexpectedly. This is expected as many recommend getting a different stand or bracket.

This microphone is a solid bit of kit. It's not cheap plastic like most electronics, it's a solid heavy metal thing that looks like it is designed to last for years and the sound quality is exceptional even for my non-telegenic voice. The microphone offers different modes for various uses, I have only used it for personal vlogging. So yes it's expensive, but think of it as an investment, not just buying any old peripheral - it will probably keep quite a reasonable resale value should you wish to sell it in a few years time. Loads of internet vloggers and podcasters use this microphone or a similar model so it is tried and tested. How it works with background noise I assumed that microphones like this automatically filter out most/all background noise as my cheap headsets always have that typical annoying background fuzzy noise even when the room is quiet. That's NOT QUITE how it works per se but this microphone does handle it a lot better - it is very sensitive so it can pick up noises, so you may need to use software such as audacity to filter out such noise if it is an issue. The microphone has a "gain" control, so by turning the gain down to a reasonable level, the microphone picks up my voice loud and clear but it does not pick up my computer's fan or the noise outside my house (so long as the window is closed), so by having the gain set to the right amount I don't need to tweak the audio of my recordings. Obviously it is still sensitive to noises on the desk such as moving your keyboard and mouse, so to get around this you would have to use a mounting arm rather than the included stand (or just be careful with your hands). Turning the gain up considerably does make my voice much louder but it then picks up computer fan noises and such, but it is not necessary for the gain to be this high for vlogging in front of a computer screen. The microphone plugs in via USB, on Windows 10 it should be plug and play and the computer should recognise it quite clearly. The included headphone port will automatically feedback your own voice through the connected headphones and it is immediate so you don't hear yourself being repeated, and you can tell if the mute button is on/off by the headphones as well as the LED. You can change your computer's speaker settings to use this headphone port for all other computer sounds if you wish to do so (essentially using it as a headphone jack extension for the entire computer). The volume knob on the front is for the headphones, not for the microphone which is instead volume adjusted by the gain knob at the back.

​I bought this Blue Yeti on a whim for my home office setup, and it has completely changed my audio game. I was expecting a decent upgrade from my old headset mic, but this thing is on another level. The clarity is astonishingly good—my friends on Discord now say they can hear me chewing my cereal from a mile away (which, apparently, is a pro for them, but maybe not for me). ​The setup was as simple as plugging it in, and the different polar patterns make it super versatile, whether I'm recording a podcast or just hopping on a video call. It captures the full range of my voice, from my booming laughter to my quiet, mumbled thoughts about what to have for dinner. ​Now for the minor con: This microphone is an absolute beast. It has a solid, heavy-duty build, which is great for durability, but it's not exactly what you'd call portable. It takes up a significant chunk of real estate on my desk, and I definitely wouldn't want to carry it around in my backpack. It’s a real mic-nificent piece of equipment, but maybe not for the traveler. ​Overall, if you're looking for professional-quality sound without a complicated setup, this microphone is a legendary choice. It's been a monster improvement, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

This item was purchased to record a weekly radio show from a home studio. Having used many different types and brands of mics, the Blue Yeti is one of the best microphones that I have ever used. It is extremely functional and simply works by plug and play the USB into your device and you are up and running. It isn’t the smallest and most compact mic you will use, but the size compensates for the its sturdy feel and quality of the product. The item I have is the silver model which gives it a high quality feel to the item, it also sits well alongside my MacBook device which is also silver in colour - so is well coordinated. The mic is quite heavy, but easy to move around - however this means that the item is well grounded and doesn’t move around the desk or recording studio. It undoubtedly has a feel of quality about the item - which is reassuring. The recording settings on the item are also second-to-none, allowing directional pick-up. This can range from a one-person recording/podcast, to allowing a face-to-face interview to take place and then a full omnidirectional mode which picks up all around the room. Each function comes at the turn of a dial. Another positive is that it has a 5mm jack socket for plugging headphones directly into the item, allowing for the person making the recording to hear live playback through the cans. Overall this is an excellent product, and I would suggest comes highly recommended if you are looking to make a high quality recording for a radio show, podcast, video voiceover etc.

Amazing quality, surprised by how heavy it was, very robust. I get great comments on the mic quality. One customer asked what kind of bird I was keeping whilst on a video call. This was a bird outside in my garden tweeting, that is how sensitive it is. Would definitely buy again.

The Blue Microphones Yeti USB microphone in the blackout finish is a standout choice for anyone looking to achieve professional sound quality with minimal setup. Featuring three condenser capsules and four selectable polar patterns, it offers impressive flexibility for podcasting, streaming, voiceovers, music recording, and video calls. The plug-and-play USB connection works seamlessly with both PC and Mac, making it easy to get started straight out of the box. The built-in headphone output with volume control allows for real-time, latency-free monitoring, which is a huge plus for precise recordings. Solidly built and visually sleek, the Yeti feels premium and stable on the desk, while consistently delivering clear, detailed audio. Overall, it’s a reliable, all-in-one microphone that has earned its reputation as a favourite among content creators and streamers.

Excellent

Nice microphone that works really well (plug and play). Way better than most headset microphones.

Peak