It’s 2021 my friends. In a time where life seems too unsure, let your voice be heard. Make content, connect with your friends and embark on creative endeavours; the ‘EPOS B20 Streaming Microphone’ is one excellent tool that can assist you on your way.

Neatly packaged in its sleek black box, this B20 microphone comes with a stand that is easily bolted together with the base and a USB to USB-C power cable. The set-up was simple and hassle-free with the microphone easy to build and was pretty much plug and play from the get-go. At a whopping 2.9 metres of power cable, this is the most length I have had in a peripheral for a long time. You know how I feel about this, all that extra length provides the user with a plethora of organisation options for your working space.

Coming out of the box, the B20 is dark and silky. In a powdered matte black style, EPOS is printed down one side in their signature clean but bold print. In a slim pill shape, once built it can be pivoted forwards or backwards at any desirable angle. The meshed voice module also is seamlessly integrated into the overall design. On the front face, you have your mute button and the volume control. On the backside, you will find the gain dial and the pickup changer. The pickup changer has 4 pattern options; Cardioid, Omnidirectional, Stereo and Bidirectional, giving you the ability to use this mic for a range of situations. Whether it be an interview, Zoom call, round-robin podcast or live streaming, The B20 microphone is ready.

Made of aluminium, one very surprising but pleasant feature is the fact it is so dang light. This lightweight feature makes it easily suitable for a 3/8” thread boom arm, which I highly recommend but more on that later.

This mic runs at an audio capture rate of 48KHz and uses a resolution of 24-bits meaning clear precise sound that recognises all your vocal frequencies, tones and pitches. I found when compared to my previous stream microphone, my voice, although deep as it is, was crystal clear and my squeals of joy realistically irritating. Watching streams and captures back, there such a shocking dynamic sound quality, with each pitch or tone alteration caught with such clarity. The B20 definitely has a more powerful pickup and throwdown of sound compared to a lot of their competitors.

The pickup power of the B20 is insane. Let me explain. When I used the B20 on my desk with the originally included stand I would get this constant humming noise at first testing. It drove my chat and I mad as we tried everything to fix it. Little did I know it was picking up the vibrations of my PC that albeit was far away down the other end of the desk, but sitting on the desk nonetheless. The instant I mounted it on a boom arm, the feedback from the vibrations deceased. Both a good and bad thing but mainly incredible, the B20 will capture every minute sound. If you do have a bit of a noisy room and don’t want to fork out for a boom arm, you could also set up a noise gate in your streaming software as another option.

Although it is designed to naturally blend in, the mute button LED is almost too subtle that I often was muted during my broadcasts because it is not glaringly obvious you are muted. While mostly human error, it would be nice to have a bit more of a symbol to unmute the mic. Another learning curve I had at the beginning was finding a nice equilibrium with the gains. Too much and you distort, too low and it doesn’t pick up your voice. While it is manageable eventually, at the beginning it was a lot of tweaking for that perfect sound. Not really an issue though as it is all about essentially balancing out your sound.

Like most peripherals, to tweak this microphone even further, it comes with the EPOS Gaming Suite software. Now, while this is all well and good, for the life of me I could not get it to open despite running Windows 10 Pro and uninstalling it and reinstalling it many times. I might try again at a later date and revise my review (**deadlines and all that), but one can assume and from researching on the EPOS website, this is a place of defining and refining your sound. This will be where you can customise your recordings and playbacks, enhance your voice, adjust voice gate and reverb levels and even toggle between 7.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo.

While the overall design of the EPOS B20 Streaming Microphone is simple it is definitely gorgeous in design and would stand out in any professional or casual setup. With crisp dynamic sound and extreme sound pick up suited for 4 different patterns, the world is definitely your oyster. Time to let your voice be heard with an EPOS B20 Streaming Microphone.

Written by: Stacey