If you want to plug a microphone into your computer and quickly sound clear and engaging whether recorded or live, we recommend the Blue Yeti. It provided the most reliably well-rounded, natural sound out of all the mics we tested—whether on Windows or Mac, or whether recording happened in professional studios or in a small, square office. Over the past four years, it’s often been rated the best or among the best by different test panels. It offers live headphone monitoring and gain control, so you can optimize how you sound. Of all the mics we’ve tested, the Yeti felt the most durable and finely constructed microphone.

The Yeti costs about $20 more than most desktop-size USB microphones, but many people may not need to spend a dime more to be ready for a podcast, a YouTube show, or an amateur voice recording once they’ve purchased it. At most, people may want to pay a few bucks for a universal pop filter to use with the Yeti. Otherwise, you get a setup that sounds much better over a video call than a laptop’s microphone, and that audio producers are more than happy to work with. One of our audio producer panelists remarked that this mic “sounds how I would expect a good professional condenser microphone to sound in an untreated room. I would use this and definitely recommend it to friends looking for USB mics.” From our experience while recording samples with dozens of different USB microphones, we can attest that the Yeti is one of the easiest mics to get plugged in and sounding good without much knob twiddling or software slider sliding.

Our panelists found the Yeti “full and rich with appropriate ambiance” and “a nice happy medium for novices or recording in non-ideal settings.” Even the Yeti X, Blue’s microphone that’s targeted toward professionals and costs about $50 more, didn’t score higher than its sibling in our blind tests for audio quality. Most other mics, whether more expensive or seriously cheaper, pick up far more mouth noise and sounds (“plosives” and “sibilance”) or significantly alter your voice at certain frequencies to round out the sound or try to correct shortcomings.

The Yeti is one of the easiest mics to get plugged in and sounding good without much knob twiddling or software slider sliding.

The Yeti ranked well for both lower and higher vocal registers; it was the top choice for the higher register for most of our panelists and in everyone’s top three for the lower register. For the other microphones, our testers only preferred the mics for one register over the other. For example, one panelist chose the AmazonBasics microphone as top for the higher register, but fourth place for the lower one. The Yeti is less likely to hiss, boom, or enhance higher or lower voice disparities than other microphones. It’s a sensible USB mic at a reasonable price for most people.

The Yeti’s headphone jack and in-mic gain controls make it ideal for podcasting or recording vocals. The zero-latency headphone jack lets you hear yourself without any delay as you record, and the in-mic gain control gives you more control over the volume coming out of the microphone and going into your computer. This is helpful anytime you need to make on-the-fly adjustments for louder or softer speakers. If you’re recording something live, like a podcast, it’s also much easier to dial down a mic’s physical gain dial just a tad than it is to figure out which software slider you need to click and drag to reduce background noise.

While other mics in this price category offer a headphone jack, in-mic gain, and mute controls, the Yeti’s controls are the simplest and most intuitive to use. The master volume control mimics a headphone monitor control on a professional recording console. We liked the tactile clicks and volume marker that made it easy to gauge the adjustments as we went along, as opposed to the controls on the Blue Yeti Nano, which has a similar dial without that visual or tactile feedback. The Yeti’s light-up mute button is accessible on the front of the mic, which comes in handy for live recordings, whereas other mics (including the Shure MV5 and AmazonBasics microphones) have a harder-to-press mute button on the back.

The other side of the Yeti has a dial with firm, reassuring clicks between four pickup patterns: cardioid (one person), stereo (multiple sources from two sides), omni (the whole room), and bidirectional (two people across from each other). A surprising number of microphones we tested made it hard, or just hard to see, what pickup mode you were using, and what features and inputs you had enabled. With four pattern modes, the Yeti is the most versatile of the microphones we’ve tested—most mics have one or two modes.

The Yeti comes with its own swiveling table stand, but you can remove it and place the mic on a traditional mic stand—but not all mic stands, and not without a little hassle. More on that below.