It’s clear why Logitech bought Blue back in July 2018. The Southern Californian audio company (an acronym for “Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics,” incidentally) has become synonymous with USB microphones since releasing the first Snowball back in 2005.
What seemed like a niche at the time has since become a cultural touchstone, positioning the company well to be embraced first by podcasters and then Twitch streamers. Blue’s USB mics aren’t the highest quality one can purchase for these purposes, but the plug and play functionality felt fairly revolutionary when it first hit the scene.
The company recently issued a long overdue update to its best-selling Yeti. The Yeti X is, for most intents and purposes, a pretty subtle update. I’ve been using it a bit here and there for a couple of weeks now. I recorded the outro to the latest episode of my podcast on the thing and lent it to Anthony for a couple of episodes of Original Content.
Aside from from the spiffy black paint job, the biggest aesthetic change is the addition of a real-time LED meter that’s housed around the illuminating volume nob. It’s a small touch, but an important one for live streamers. This matter of monitoring is largely missing or a pain to access in many streaming apps, so there’s a lot to be said for being able to change your levels on the fly, adjusting things back down if you peak into the red.
The sound has been improved, from three to four-capsule condensers. Yeti’s sound was already solid for the world of USB microphones, and it’s nice to see the company continue to up its game there. Some of its recent mics like the Yeti Nano have honestly felt like a step backward. The X sounds crisp, and I fully plan to use it for an upcoming remote podcasting project I have in the pipeline.
