Logitech Blue Yeti review

Our Verdict

82%

The Blue Yeti is a great-sounding, versatile and excellent value streaming microphone, but it’s is very big.

The Logitech Blue Yeti is a hugely popular USB microphone that has been around for many years (previously just the Blue Yeti, before Logitech bought the brand) and has become something of a standard option for podcasters and streamers alike, thanks to its audio quality, pickup pattern-versatility and reasonable price. Is it really worthy of its popularity though?

Logitech Blue Yeti design and stand

First things first, the single most striking thing about this best USB microphone contender is its size. Both the mic itself and its included stand are huge, with the mic being about the size of a 16oz (500ml) can of beer and weighing 1.2lbs (0.55kg) and the solid metal stand weighs another 2.2lbs (1kg). Yet despite this size there’s no height adjustment in the stand and while the microphone does stand much taller than the other competing mics (27cm for address position), you’ll still need two or three pre-00s style phone directories to get it up to mouth height.

You can of course direct the microphone towards your mouth via its sturdy pivot mount or mount the mic on another stand. However, unlike the likes of the Elgato Wave 1, Elgato Wave 3, and the Shure MV7, the mounting point isn’t on the base of the pivot arm/stand but on the base of the microphone itself, so the included stand is totally redundant if you use another stand.

Logitech Blue Yeti IO and controls

Also on the underside of the mic are its inputs and outputs, which consist of a miniUSB – yes, miniUSB in this day and age – and 3.5mm headphone socket. If you move up to the $140 Blue Yeti Pro you’ll get an XLR output while the newer $120 Yeti X or more compact Yeti Nano move up to a new-fangled microUSB output.

Around the body of the mic are four controls, with two on the front and two on the back. Up front are the headphone monitoring volume and microphone mute buttons while round the back is the mic gain level and pickup pattern selector, the latter of which brings us onto the real selling point of this microphone, especially at this price.

Logitech Blue Yeti condensers and pickup patterns

Inside the Yeti are three condenser capsules that can be combined to provide four different pickup patterns. As well as the standard cardioid pattern that most similar microphones use, you can select a bidirectional output where the mic essentially pickups up what’s directly in front and behind it, which is ideal for interview type situations. Omnidirectional  mode opens up the mic to picking up everything around it while stereo does what it suggests, picking up a stereo image rather than the mono output of the other modes – something that’s ideal for when you’re wanting to pickup the ambience of a room.

Few of these extra pickup patterns are likely to be all that useful for game streaming and home recording but they greatly increase the versatility of this microphone.

Where the Yeti suffers a little is in its sampling and bit rate. Unlike the Yeti Pro that’s rated to 24-bit and 192KHz, the vanilla Yeti is limited to 16-bit at 48KHz. That’s still CD-quality audio that’s still ample for most home purposes but will limit its use in more demanding applications.
In our tests it performed superbly, though, providing very clear, full-sounding recordings with each of the pickup patterns clearly delivering on exactly what they promise.

Logitech Blue Yeti pros and cons

Pros

• Great sound quality
• Multiple pickup patterns
• Great value

Cons

• Very large
• Lacks XLR output
• MiniUSB!?

Logitech Blue Yeti specs

The Logitech Blue Yeti specs list is:

Logitech Blue Yeti price

The Logitech Blue Yeti price is $110, making it a mid-priced and excellent-value USB microphone, as it packs in loads of features.

Logitech Blue Yeti review conclusion

The Logitech Blue Yeti is a supremely capable and versatile USB/streaming microphone, thanks to excellent sound quality, a wide selection of pickup patterns, and a relatively low price. Its lack of XLR output and limited bit and sample rates make it less impressive on paper, but in practice it well and truly delivers the goods sonically. It’s very large, though, so if you don’t foresee the need for extra pickup patterns, there are more compact and convenient options available.

So good is the Blue Yeti that it takes top spot on our best USB microphone list, providing the best balance of features, price and sound quality.