Blue Microphones Tiki USB mic: Beatweek 2012 Best of Show at CES

by Bill Palmer

It looks like a cross between an old school perforated metallic microphone and a crooked USB thumb drive, but the Blue Microphones Tiki turns out to be quite the high tech little gadget. It is in fact a microphone, and it’s designed specifically to stick out of your laptop’s USB port in order to provide you with much better voice communication than your laptop’s built in microphone would.

In an age in which Skype and FaceTime audio and video chats are increasingly commonplace, laptop internal mics are barely adequate, motivating some users (including yours truly) to almost automatically reach for a headset when a digital call is coming in. But the Tiki boosts the audio quality of the conversations in general while also adding in little features like muting out background noise when you’re not talking. The Tiki is $59 and it just might mean the USB headset era can mercifully draw to a close.

About Bill Palmer

Bill Palmer is Editor in Chief of Beatweek Magazine. His editorial contributions include interviews with musicians and iPhone industry coverage.