Tabletop mics typically look and sound awful, leading many gamers to select headsets instead, putting up with tinny or “I’m broadcasting from a box” sound. The gorgeous Blue Yeti X should change your mind — particularly if you play or stream World of Warcraft.
Logitech bought Blue, renowned makers of high-end microphones, for $117 million in 2018. The Yeti X came a year later, and Blue released this World of Warcraft edition recently, just in time for the upcoming WoW Shadowlands expansion. It’s not cheap: Picking up the WoW edition Yeti X will set you back $200, $30 more than the normal, already-luxury Yeti X. But it’s worth it.
Let’s start with the stunning build quality. You can tell just pulling this nearly three-pound thing out of its custom foam cradle that it’s well-constructed. Its materials are gorgeous on the eyes, and the fit and finish is perfect. The World of Warcraft branding on the mic is subtle and classy. Etched icons surround the base.
The microphone’s buttons are large, pleasantly designed and give satisfying tactile feedback when you click or spin them. It has custom-programmable LEDs (for turning Alliance blue, naturally.) In short, if you’re streaming, it’s going to look gorgeous.
My major complaint with most tabletop mics is the quality of the sound; there’s just too much ambient “there” there between you and the mic when you’ve got a keyboard and mouse in between you. But the Yeti picked up my voice flawlessly, even doing a nice job of tuning out my clackety mechanical keyboard.
The Blue Yeti X has four pickup patterns: cardioid, which just records you; omni, which records from all four sides; bidirectional (primarily for interviews); and stereo, when you really want to pick up those ambient sounds.
I did most of my testing in Cardioid mode, since that’s how most folks will use it. I recorded samples, and held online chats in Discord and Zoom. Others in channel declared it better than my usual sound (I typically use the Steelseries Arctis Pro + DAC, which is a damned good wired headset mic,) and I had to admit the recorded samples sounded terrific.
The thing that makes the Blue Yeti X World of Warcraft Edition worth the extra $30, however, is the easy-to-use software. It comes with not only a wide variety of standard modulation options (to make you sound good, regardless of your voice pitch or volume), but a small mountain of World of Warcraft-specific sounds.
Want to sound like a death knight? A gnome? An imp? One of dozens of other voices? It’s a click. Want to play prerecorded sound effects, like that “you’ve got loot” sound from dungeons, a voice clip from Sylvanas, sounds from the Shadowlands expansion, or a dragon’s roar? You can hotkey that. And if you don’t like the amazing variety of stuff the mic comes with, you can program your own, recording and hotkeying/macroing samples and doing your own custom voice effects that you can save and use at just the right time in raid.
This luxury microphone has pretty much every feature I’d want to look for in a tabletop USB mic. To be fair, it’s not going to give you the quality that a traditional professional mic hooked up to a real soundboard would; there’s a limit to what you can do over that USB connection.
But the Blue Yeti X World of Warcraft Edition stacks up well against any other USB mic on the market, and the addition of the custom World of Warcraft sound effects and sound clips definitely make this edition worth the premium price.
Platform: Windows/MacOS
Manufacturer: Logitech/Blue
Release Date: October 2020
Price: $199
Score: 9/10
A sample of the Blue Yeti X World of Warcraft Edition was loaned to Forbes by Logitech/Blue for this review and returned.
