Blue Raspberry review: A powerful, portable and pricey microphone for on-the-go recording
Blue, as well as being a boyband and a state of mind, is the California-based company behind the world’s most popular USB microphones.
The company’s products brought studio-quality hardware to the consumer-grade market at a time when USB mics were little more than call centre headsets. The Snowball mic alone helped to kickstart home podcasting (well, decent-sounding home podcasting at the very least).
The Blue Raspberry is a Mars bar sized, portable microphone for iPhones (and some Androids). It connects via micro-USB or Lightning, and is designed for podcasting in the wilderness, conducting on-location interviews and recording meetings, notes and related memoranda.
It provides great sound for its tiny size, though without the ability to switch polar patterns, you’ll find that the quality drops in noisier environments. The Raspberry is also more expensive than the larger, fuller-featured Yeti (and not as good quality) so you’re paying over the odds for the portability of the thing.
As an upgrade to the built-in iPhone microphone – and for somebody unwilling or unable to lug about the more unwieldy Yeti microphone – the hyper-compact Raspberry presents a quality, if pricey, on-the-go recording solution.
£169, bluemic.com