If you're sitting at a computer, you're probably already equipped to voice chat with Skype or other services. Notebooks have cameras and microphones built-in, while PC headsets have decent boom mics, so it doesn't take much effort to make voice calls with your computer. For better sound, normally you'd look toward larger, dedicated microphones retailing for at least $80, like the Blue Microphones Snowball or the more expensive Yeti. Blue Microphones now offers a compromise product: The Tiki is a smaller-than-usual $59.99 (list) microphone that plugs directly into a USB port and offers improved audio quality for voice calls. It works well, sounds good, and is eminently portable. But it isn't quite good enough for recording podcasts, which puts it in a bit of a weird spot in the market.
Design
The Tiki looks like a microphone fused with a USB drive. On its own, the device is a 3-inch-long brown and silver metal tab with a USB connector on one end and a rounded microphone section coming out of the middle. The microphone is easily recognizable, with twin metal grilles covering the condenser capsules and a light-up Blue logo placed between the body and the mic parts. On the far end of the device, a small, invisible button hidden behind a metal tab switches between the microphone's Speech Mode and Natural Recording Mode. The entire mic can plug directly into a USB port, or plug into the included dock, a brown and silver metal sled that holds the microphone securely and offers a very useful three feet of cable if your USB port isn't in an ideal position.
The Speech Mode, indicated by the Blue logo glowing blue (or orange when it's not picking up any sound), is the microphone's noise-isolating voice mode for Skype calls. Because it tries to isolate your voice from the background noise around it, it doesn't have quite the clarity it could have, and can sound slightly processed and soft. The Natural Recording Mode, indicated by the Blue logo glowing purple, is the mode you want when you want to record anything in a relatively quiet space and want clarity more than keeping out noise. It makes the microphone pick up everything as clear as it can, without any noise isolation or processing.
Performance
The Tiki picks up sound much clearer than the microphone built into my notebook, and works well for Skype and other voice calls. The Speech Mode occasionally cut off the first moments of my words when the background was very quiet, but that was with actively trying to keep everything silent between statements. If you speak normally, the Speech Mode should have no trouble keeping up with you while you talk. The Natural Recording Mode sounded crisp and clear, though you might have to wrestle with your recording software a little to get more volume out of it. The input seems to be slightly lower than Speech Mode, even though it picked up more sound from the surrounding area. I had no problem coaxing more sound out of the recording with Audacity, but it'll be a bit of effort to get the most out of it. Despite being a condenser mic from one of the more prominent microphone manufacturers, the Tiki isn't built for recording anything professionally or seriously. This was made more with Skype in mind than studio software.
If you want a dedicated mic for podcasts, the Tiki is a portable, economical choice. However, this $50 device only works slightly better than a similarly priced headset with a boom mic, and if you really want to record excellent audio you should invest in a larger, more expensive microphone. Blue makes several excellent models like the Snowball and Yeti that can provide much better sound if you want to take your podcasts seriously and be open for recording work that requires even more clarity. The Yeti is a nice little mic, but it barely fits in a small niche where a little less can get you performance that's just as good and a little more will get you performance that's much better.
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