Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Build Quality Overall, it's really well put together for the price point. I was expecting much worse, and was pleasantly surprised. The stand is plastic and unweighted, however the mic doesn't tip over easily. On the bottom are non-slip rubber feet, which helps. The holder swivels up and down, and it uses a metal bolt as the axle. The mic itself has a metal basket, and has a little weight to it. There's an on-off switch on the mic itself. My only concern about the build is that the on-off switch has to be inside the split on the stand, or it'll turn your mic on with a slight bump if in the off position. With it in that split, it's difficult to turn on and off. The cord is generous in length and it is UNSHIELDED. The cord ends in a 3 terminal 3.5mm plug. It does not use a standard mic end, which is 2 terminal. It did not work with my on-board mic jack at all, but works fine with my creative labs sound card. Performance It's better than a Logitech desktop mic I've had for several years, with a caveat which I'll explain later. It picks up well. It's more or less omnidirectional. I have a television sitting at a 130 degree angle from the front of the mic, and it barely picks up. If I turn the mic to about 90 degrees with respect to the tv, it picks up the tv enough to upset my ventrilo friends. I can be heard clearly, with little static and having the mic positioned 3 feet from my face. The caveat to quality is the cord picks up ANY noise from ANY nearby power cords. I really mean this. The cord can NOT be anywhere near ANY cord carrying power to ANYTHING. Trying to run it behind the desk picked up a very notable hum from the monitor power supplies. Along the floor picked up from the UPS. The only way I managed to get it to not have a very loud and obnoxious hum was to run it around where it wasn't close to anything, but nor was it close to my desk. Tweaking If you've got a soldering iron, and access to shielded mic cable, it's really easy to replace the cable with a shielded mic cable. If you use a shielded cable, the hum vanishes. You'll be able to position it anywhere without worry about picking up the dreaded hum. Without shielding, people will think you sound like "you're talking underwater next to a power plant" if you have the cord near any power cords. With shielding, they'll comment how nice your mic is. I paid $8 to a local A/V supplier for a 6 foot shielded cable with a standard 2 terminal 3.5mm mic end, and it took me 15 minutes to desolder the old cable and solder the new one in place, including time to let the iron heat up. Overall Without replacing the cable on the microphone, it's very poor for desktop computer use. In a location WITHOUT power cords, it'd be good for its price, but you'd still have to worry about where the cord was laying. Adding an additional $8 replacement part for the cord, replacing the cord with a shielded mic cable, it's very very easy to make the mic wonderful for desktop use. When I was at $14 invested for the mic, I had to switch back to 'old trusty' to be heard clearly. After investing a total of $22 (mic and aftermarket shielded mic cable), it gets better reviews from my peers than another person's Shure 522, which is 5X the price. Would I purchase it again? In a heartbeat, with a shielded mic cable in the same order. Ratings Quality: Stand 9/10, Mic 10/10, Cable 1/10; Average 6.6/10 Performance: As Delivered, 2/10; Modded, 10/10 How it arrived in the box, I can only give it 2 stars. With a simple cable replacement, it'd get 5 stars, but that's not what is delivered.