if you're looking for the best budget microphone for live streaming or podcasting you'll most likely come across one of these seven microphones So today we're going to be comparing these mics against each other so we can see how they sound and also figure out which mic might be the best fit for you you got to just press record hi everyone Craig Pro it with think media I want to first start off by saying all of these mics are really solid in their own regard you really can't go wrong with any of these microphones individually they all have their own Pros but then they each have their own sort of quirks or subtle cons but all them are pretty good so what I want to start off with is some audio sample tests comparing each of these microphones back to back to back this is typically what everybody wants to hear so we're going to do it first and then we're going to highlight some of the individual features of each microphone so let's start off with those audio tests this is an audio test with the ATR 2100x XLR Port I'm recording indoors in a controlled sound environment with the microphone 5 in away from my mouth and no EQ has been applied this is an audio test with a Samsung Q2 use XLR Port I'm recording indoors and a contr sound environment with the microphone 5 in away from my mouth and no EQ has been applied this is an audio test with the Samsung q9u XLR Port I'm recording this indoors in a controlled sound environment with the microphone 5 in away from my mouth and no EQ has been applied this is an audio test with the Audio Technica at2020 USB I'm recording indoors in a controlled sound environment with the microphone 5 in away from my mouth and no EQ has been applied this is an audio test with the road pod mic I'm recording in IND doors in a controlled sound environment with the microphone 5 in away from my mouth and no EQ has been applied this is an audio test with the Audio Technica at2020 XLR I'm recording indoors in a controlled sound environment with the microphone 5 in away from my mouth and no EQ has been applied this is an audio test with the shore mv7 X I'm recording indoors in a controlled sound environment with the microphone 5 in away from my mouth and no EQ has been applied all right so those were some controlled sound tests and now we're going to move on to talk about each to the mics individually and we have three categories of mics that we're going to talk about the first would be what I'm calling combo microphones so these are both XLR and USB outputs so they have both and then we'll talk about just USB outputs and then just XLR outputs so we have three different kinds of microphones and the first mic on our list is the Audio Technica ATR 2100x and the main highlight of this microphone is the fact that it only costs $48 at the time of recording this video that's a really low price point for such a good sounding microphone they range in price anywhere from all the way as low as $48 which is what we found it for all the way up to $79 so you just want to time it to where it's on the cheaper end get the best deal that you can so this is the cheapest mic on our list and it also comes with several really good accessories including two different kinds of USB cables so you get USB type A and USB type c you do get an XLR cable as well and a tabletop mic stand and a mic holder though these aren't the best quality and I'd probably purchase a different type of mic stand now with this microphone you are of course getting two outputs you get XLR and USBC which I'm very thankful it is USB type-c because many USB mics use older types of USB ports like USB mini USB type A and most of the world has moved to USB type-c so it's nice that you can bring just one USBC cable for like I'm using right now the phone that I got is the iPhone 15 Pro Max so I could use the USBC port for this and connect it even to this microphone which is is actually my favorite way to use this I love plugging this mic directly into my iPhone 15 Pro Max with a USBC cable and then using this microphone to produce really high quality sounding vertical social media content so if I'm recording vertical Instagram stories and I want a really high quality sounding microphone that just plugs right into my phone this is a great option for that on the bottom of the microphone you also have a built-in headphone jack that lets you monitor audio directly from the microphone so this is really cool and with that headphone jack you're also able to monitor your computer audio at the same time you hear your mic input as well so you could hear your voice through your headphones as well as if you were on a zoom call or a coaching call or something you'd be able to hear your client's voice at the same time with that headphone jack so that's a really cool feature a couple of Cons with this microphone would first just be the sound quality is a little bit worse than the other mics on our list not by a ton but I definitely can tell a difference between this $48 microphone and some of the higher-end mics on our list the other thing I'll mention is just how this mic deals with what we call plosives now plosives are that kind of P sound that you make the wind noise that comes out when you make a sound with a p like when I say my last name Pro it you're going to get a little blow sound and this mic doesn't do super good with those pivs let me show you something though the inside of this mic capsule has a built-in wind screen in there which is pretty cool which helps with those plosive sounds but it would be ideal if it came with an additional wind screen that you could put on top of this capsule right here you could go purchase a thirdparty wind screen to put on top of this mic right here which will help with the plosives a little bit but overall it's not a huge deal for me but it's definitely something I can hear more than some of the other microphones the second mic on our list is the Samsung q2u which we've talked about many times on the channel over the years we love this little microphone and it's very similar to the ATR 2100x so I'm not going to go too in depth with this microphone it's very similar with that USB functionality and the XLR inputs this mic is usually priced at around $70 USD which I think is a pretty fair price point for what you're getting now one feature of this microphone that I think is kind of weird is because it is a little bit old it does have a USB uh mini typeb port on the bottom of the microphone which is the cable that you have to bring to connect it to your computer so you can't just bring any type of cable this is a pretty specific cable that most people in 2024 are not using anymore so this is just another thing that you'd have to worry about if you wanted to travel with this microphone you always got to make sure to bring that dedicated cable with this microphone but if you are someone who just records indoors in your home studio or your home office it shouldn't be a big deal just keep that cable with the microphone and you'll be able to record no problem the q2u does have the headphone jack on the bottom of the microphone just like the first mic on our list did as well and you're able to monitor your computer audio from that headphone jack as well I think some of the cons would just be first to me it just looks a little odd it does look like a vocal mic and the color is not my favorite it's kind of like a weird like grayish sort of off gray brown looking microphone not my favorite looking microphone in the world but it does sound really good the q2u and the ATR 2100x are very very similar microphones the q2u does sound a little bit better in my opinion so I'd probably go for this one if I was you unless you really just are on a budget and you only have about $50 to spend then the ATR 2100x is very comparable and our third and final combo microphone is a Samsung q9u so this is kind of the big brother to the q2u and this microphone comes in at $149 at the time of recording this video it has been as low as like a $100 we've seen but it's typically between $1 and $150 we got it for $149 one of my favorite things about this microphone is it does have a USBC port and not the older usba a or USB mini Port so this is really nice for being more in line with what modern tech has adopted with the USBC feature we also get some physical switches on the body for Mid frequency boost as well as a high pass filter so this could be nice for people who don't want to spend as much time eqing the sound frequencies of this microphone which we'll talk about in just a second this mic also looks really dope in my opinion it actually comes with this pretty large windc screen which I will take off here and look at this this thing this thing looks super cool in my opinion it kind of reminds me of the road pot mic which is one of the coolest looking mics in my opinion um also this mic is huge it's by far one of the biggest microphones on our list I think it actually no it definitely is I'm looking at the other mics here on the ground this is for sure the biggest one the sound quality of the q9u does sound pretty full I do like the way it sounds but in my opinion it does need a little bit of EQ in order to make it sound the best so I think that this mic sounds a little bit muddied and everybody has their own opinion of what that even means but what I tend to say is that a muddied sound means the lower-end frequencies and even a little bit some of the the mid-range too is a little too prominent in the mix and it's lacking Clarity so some of these microphones that we'll talk about have a little bit more of a crispier sound and this mic in order to make it sound that way you need to manipulate the audio frequencies just a little bit in post- production so if you don't want to deal with that this might not be the best mic for you also the XLR preamp of this microphone is pretty weak so you do need a good audio interface to plug this mic into if you are using the XLR Port if you don't have that it's okay because the USBC Port sounds really good with just any computer so just use the USBC if you don't want to deal with audio interfaces but if you do want to use the XLR you need a good highquality audio interface like the roadter Pro 2 or you need to use a cloudlifter to boost your microphone signal you can't just plug it into something like the Scarlet solo that audio interface is not going to give you enough gain to make this mic sound good before we dive into our next mic real quick if you are are thinking about starting a podcast or you already have one a great way to maximize the full potential of your podcast is to repurpose content for social media and just blast that long form podcast episodes to all of the social media platforms well to do this really quickly and save a lot of time we love using Opus clip which uses AI to help repurpose shorts from your long form podcast episodes Opus is really great and they also just released a brand new feature called clip anything which as the name implies allows you to practically clip anything out of your long form podcast episodes by prompting the AI to select certain portions of your video this new feature is super powerful so if you want to try this out our think media audience actually gets to cut the line and have Early Access to this beta feature so click the link down in the description below and you can get early access to this feature completely for free okay so now moving into the USB category of microphones we only have one mic we want to talk about today and that's the Audio Technica at2020 USB plus microphone I've had my mic for over eight years and this thing is still going super strong unlike the other microphones on our list this microphone is a condenser microphone the other mics are Dynamic microphones and a condenser versus a dynamic mic just convert sound waves differently they use different technology to convert those sound waves to a recordable audio signal so they're just different one is not necessarily better than the other and in fact a condenser microphone is usually a lot more sensitive to sound so you're going to have less noise in your final audio recording when you use a condenser microphone and it's also going to sound a little bit crispier in my opinion but the trade-off with condenser mics are they're a lot worse at canceling out some of the background sounds and I got crazy noisy children downstairs who yell and scream and throw toys and play basketball and it's wild down there and this mic is so sensitive to sound that I can pick up what my children are doing downstairs there those kids so when choosing between a condenser and a dynamic microphone you really just got to think about what your studio environment is like if you are in a really controlled sound environment a condenser microphone does sound really good but if you don't have the ability to sound treat your room very well it might be better to go for a dynamic microphone a couple more features with this microphone it does have a headphone jack on the bottom that you can use to monitor your audio directly from the microphone and it has a cool Little Mix stle to set how much you want to hear your voice or your computer audio depending on what you'd want to hear more of so that's a cool little feature and the last con that I'll mention is I feel like this mic is lacking a little bit on the lower in frequencies so if you have a really nice warm Rich radio voice this might not be the mic for you all of that being said I have had this mic for eight years and I really do love the way this mic sounds with my voice so now we're going to dive into our final category of mics which are XLR microphones and we have three we want to highlight the first being the Audio Technica at2020 but this is the XLR version of this microphone so we just talked about the USB version but there is an XLR version of this mic as well this mic only cost $99 and again this mic is one of the most popular microphones around I did like the way the USB version sounded so much that a couple years ago I went out and also picked up the XLR version of this microphone and the beauty about these mics the both the XLR and the USB version are that they sound very very similar so I love when there's consistency here between these two mics you really could interchange them and they're not going to sound very different at all the XLR version of this mic is also a condenser microphone so all of those pros and cons we talked about with the condenser mic format apply to this microphone as well there's really not a whole lot more we need to talk about for the XLR variant of this microphone most of the same pros and cons from the USB carry over to the XLR as well the second XLR mic on our list is the famous Road pod mic I love the way this mic looks in particular the look and feel is really really cool it's built really good as well I have the white version of this mic but they also have a Black Version as well but I just thought the white one is so Saucy I mean look at this thing this mic does pair really well with all of Road's audio interfaces like the road cter Pro the roadter Pro 2 which is what I'm currently recording on and the roadter duo these Road interfaces even have presets where with one click of a button you could input the preset Road has made for the Pod mic which is really cool I actually have that feature turned off for this video because I just wanted you to hear the raw sound quality coming out of this microphone but that is a really cool feature with the Pod mic again sound quality here is really good I always tend to have this mic set up in my studio when I need to hop on a zoom call and plug it directly into my Sony fx30 top handle for Zoom meetings this mic works great for that it looks really good on those Zoom calls and it also sounds really good but on that note I do have to boost the audio gain quite a bit to get the output that I need and overall the biggest con with this microphone is just the weaker preamp that this microphone has if you do have a nice powerful audio mixer it's not going to be a huge problem but if you don't you are going to need to do some things to boost the audio signal also the lower end frequencies are certainly lacking a little bit with this microphone which gives this microphone a little bit of a brighter or a crispier sound which is something you actually might prefer but if you'd like to have those lower end frequencies captured a little bit better this isn't the best mic on our list and the final XLR mic on our list is the shore mv7 X this is the XLR version of their mv7 series there's also the mv7 and the mv7 plus that feature a USB port but these mics retail for over $200 which kept them from making our list so this mic is exclusively XLR this is again a dynamic microphone like most of the microphones on our list and the sound quality is really really good in my opinion this is the best sounding microphone on our entire list of microphones here it's a very full sound from the lowend frequencies all the way up to the highs as I was working with the audio files from the shore mv7 X I was so impressed that I decided to stack it against here it is the $500 Shore sm7 DB so I'll switch over to here this $500 microphone right now you can see it's very rich sounds really beautiful switching back over to the $179 mic and there's not a huge difference I mean you think there would be a much larger disparity if this mic is $500 and this one's not but honestly they're pretty close and for 179 bucks you can't really go wrong with the shore mv7 x a couple Cons with this mic are you don't really get any accessories with this microphone you just get the mic and a little 5/8 thread adapter to Mount to most mic stands so you're going to have to purchase all of your accessories if you want to get this mic up and running it's also on the upper end of our price limit at $179 I do think it's worth it because it does sound really good but after you factor in getting a mic stand and an XLR interface and an XLR cable your price point is well into the three 400 $500 almost to get this mic up and running also the wind screen just it comes off really easy which just kind of annoys me I just I mean just make it more snug like why why is it so loose so when it comes down to the final recommendation that we would give in my opinion the best sounding microphone on the list is indeed the shore mv7 X but it is $179 so for me the overall value score the best value is going to be the Samsung q2u now it does sound really really good but for $ 70ish dollars you could buy two of these microphones and it comes with all of the accessories you would need to get up and running and you're still going to be under the cost if you were to just buy the short mb7 X all on its own and you still got to buy some additional accessories so if you're just starting out the Samsung q2u would be our final recommendation but if you do already have some stuff in place like an audio recorder some cables Etc and you want to really upgrade your audio the sure mv7 X would be a really good choice as well if you want to see some other mic options like the best wireless podcast and lapel microphones for under $100 you can click or tap the screen right here and you can check out that video and we'll see you in the next one