Blue Yeti Nano

Good things come in small packages

£89.99 FROM Blue, bluedesigns.com features Cardioid and omnidirectional modes, volume/mute button, Micro-USB cable

Blue has made a name in the world of microphones. Its latest offering is a shrunkdown version of the Yeti.

Audio quality is excellent: crisp and clear with no hint of fuzz. In our side-by-side comparison with the Yeti, the Nano performed very well indeed, with audio actually a touch crisper than its larger cousin.

However, you may want to mount it on a boom arm – its small frame puts it further from your mouth, affecting recording volume. The Yeti, in contrast, is the ideal height to talk into when sitting. On the other hand, the compact size of the Nano is better for travel (but the difference in box sizes isn’t much).

There are some other trade-offs compared to the Yeti, but not many. The Nano has two condenser capsules versus the Yeti’s three, but records in a higher bit-rate (24-bit to the Yeti’s 16-bit).

The Nano only has two recording patterns: cardioid (from directly in front) and omnidirectional (from all around the mic). That’s fine for general use, but you lose the Yeti’s stereo (which captures front, left and right channels) and bidirectional (front and back) modes.

The Nano looks great and is very impressive for its size, but you’ll need a USB-A to USB-C adapter if you want to use it with recent Mac notebooks.

Despite its smaller size, the Nano competes with the larger Yeti’s sound.