For years I’ve been a big proponent of gaming peripheral brands like Razer, Logitech, and SteelSeries for everything from mice and keyboards to audio such as headsets and speakers. These are companies making devices that are purpose-built for gaming, not an add-on device or an afterthought to tap into a new market. This also usually means that there are tons of features that are developed and intended to enhance the gaming experience in one way or another.
While all of this is great, what if there were an option out there for the audiophile, who loves to hear every nuance in whatever they’re listening to, but also likes to play games? That’s essentially what Meze Audio has attempted to create here with its new Boom Mic. It’s an attachment that accompanies a selection of Meze’s headphones. With it, you can achieve upgraded audio quality while also still having the ability to communicate with your friends/teammates in your favorite games. And when I say upgraded audio quality, I mean the kind of audio quality that you tend to only get with a really well-made pair of wired headphones.
Don’t get me wrong, wireless headphones and wireless gaming headsets have gotten very good. I myself am partial to the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless because they honestly sound pretty damn good. Logitech’s G Pro X 2 is in the same camp. Maybe even a cut above when it comes to hearing the all-important directional audio of footsteps and gunfire in shooters. And yet, a pair of wired headphones, Like Meze’s 99 Classic, are unmatched for sound quality and clarity.
Are there drawbacks? Sure. Wires mean no freedom. You can’t just get up out of your chair and walk to the kitchen for a snack or a drink. You need to take the headphones off first. But that’s the tradeoff for audio, which has higher clarity. All of that said, we’re not here to talk about the Meze 99 Classic, which Meze sent over to me to check out alongside the Boom Mic. No, we’re here to talk about the Boom Mic itself. How is it compared to the mics on all my other proper gaming headsets? Let’s dive in and see if it’s the right fit for you, for any gamer, and whether or not it’s worth the money. Which, by the way, the price is $79 USD.
Meze Audio Boom Mic Review: Hardware and Build Quality
Let’s get one thing straight right from the start. Meze’s build quality with this mic is top-notch. The materials used feel and look premium in every sense of the word. And I really appreciate the CNC milled and laser-engraved aluminum mic cover. Even the boom arm looks and feels great, as it’s just the ridged metal with no plastic or braided covering. That latter point might seem small, but I’ve had headsets with mics where that plastic covering peels back a little and has started to come off.
This doesn’t really hinder how the mic works, but it doesn’t look great, and it’s hard not to question whether or not other parts of the headset might start to break down if something as simple as the mic arm covering is already doing so. Meze chose to forgo encasing the mic arm in anything and leave the raw metal.
It also comes with a set of on-cable controls for volume and mic muting that feels covered in leather or soft-touch plastic material that’s satisfying to the touch. What I appreciate most is the long cable. One reason I have always shied away from wired gaming headsets is that the cable is never long enough. This always results in the cable brushing up against my arm or subtly scratching the edge of my desk or chair arm. Which causes an unpleasant sound from the vibration. I absolutely loathe it.
Meze Audio’s Boom Mic has a fairly long cable that helps prevent this, although the regular cable that comes with the headphones is longer. Even the volume and mute controls are using premium materials. The volume wheel has a knurled pattern on it for that satisfying tactile feel and added grip from your finger as you adjust the volume levels. The mute switch is metal too. In short, Meze did not skimp here. Every piece of the mic’s design was thoughtfully and carefully crafted to look and perform as premium as the company’s headphones.
What comes with the boom mic
Inside the packaging with the mic, you get a few things to complete the user experience. There’s the mic itself which comes with a cable length of 8.2 feet, a Y-adapter for use with desktops or laptops that have separate input and output ports, and a PU leather pouch for storage if you take this thing with you places. And that’s it. No other extras, but then again there don’t need to be. You have everything you need here to make the most of this mic. Short of the headphones you need to plug them into.
Design
Overall, I think Meze has designed a pretty high-quality boom mic here. The premium materials really show the attention to detail in most parts of the craftsmanship. I say most because there is one particular aspect of the design I really am not fond of. The mic is fairly loose which allows it to swivel left and right. I suspect this was an intentional design so you can move the mic away from your face if you ever want to. I do this often when I want to take a drink or take a bite of something. The thing is, the mic arm itself is also bendable. Which is without a shadow of a doubt so you can move the mic away from your face. So the swivel just seems redundant.
Of course, the redundancy isn’t my issue with this design. The issue is that the mic arm swivels too easily. It’s easily bumped which can pose a problem if that happens right in the middle of while you’re chatting. God forbid you’re trying to make a call-out to a teammate and fumble everything because the mic was bumped and your teammate didn’t hear you.
This is an issue I have in fact come across while I was using this with friends in Discord over the past weekend. On more than one occasion I went to either scratch my nose or sneeze and the mic was pushed far enough away from my mouth that I was no longer vocal. Now, to be fair, this is something you could probably mitigate if you’re simply more mindful of how close the mic is to your mouth.
However, it’s something I never have to worry about with any other headset mic after the initial placement when I put the headset on. Once the mic is in place on my other headsets, it’s not going anywhere unless I intentionally move it out of the way. I know it isn’t going anywhere by accident. This is the only thing with the design that I would change. And if Meze decides to put out future Boom mic options (and I hope it does), then I hope this is something that the company takes into consideration.
Meze Audio Boom Mic Review: Vocal Quality
Ok, so the hardware and materials are premium, mostly everything about the design is great, but how does it sound? That’s the all-important question, right? How does the mic sound? Because at the end of the day, how it looks matters a lot less than how well it works. How well can your friends/teammates hear you when you speak into it? The answer to this question should be “good.” Even better is if the answer is “great.”
Because then that means you are getting some really clear comms and that’s exactly what you want in any game where comms matter. Whether it’s Call of Duty or other shooters and you need to make callouts on the enemy position, or in games like World of Warcraft, Destiny 2, or Final Fantasy XIV where the callouts revolve around boss mechanics, which can often be crucial to the success of the encounter and a small misstep here with comms can cause an entire raid or dungeon wipe. You want the vocal quality to be as good as possible. And I’m happy to say that Meze Audio has done a really, really good job here.
I do have to admit one thing though. My initial impressions were not great. See, the setup experience was less than ideal. You’d think, what setup experience? It’s a wired pair of headphones with a boom mic add-on. Just plug them in. The problem with that is, that’s not all I needed to do for things to work properly. Upon plugging them into my laptop, I assumed everything was fine and proceeded to use them. Only, a couple of things were off. Both my friends in chat said I sounded quieter or somewhat muffled. The on-cable controls also would not work. No matter what I tried, the mute switch and volume wheel were inoperable. What a shame, I thought.
But long story short, the laptop simply wasn’t recognizing the 3.5mm jack as an input source. So the whole time it was using the built-in mic array. After an hour of reading and tinkering, I figured out how to fix this issue and got things rolling. Every session since then has been miles ahead of my first experience. With the mic performing exceptionally well in vocal clarity.
No more complaints from friends that I was too quiet or my voice wasn’t very clear. In fact, where I initially thought, the mic was just ok, but it doesn’t seem any better than the mics on my actual gaming headsets, I now think otherwise. Meze claims its boom mic has unparalleled vocal clarity compared to the competition, and I daresay it’s living up to that claim.
After this fix, the on-cable controls worked perfectly fine on my laptop as well. I also tried the mic and headphones with a desktop setup that uses separate mic input and audio output ports. No complaints there either. While I still think on-ear controls are a little easier to use and more convenient, the ones in the Meze Boom Mic do the job they were intended to do, and really, that’s all one really needs.
Meze Audio Boom Mic Review: Specs
For those who want them, I wanted to touch on the kind of details that might matter to anyone who considers themself an audio expert. The specs. The Microphone has a frequency response of 100Hz all the way down to 10KHz. It’s also a Condenser type microphone and has a microphone sensitivity of-44 ±3 dB. Lastly, the polar pattern is Omnidirectional.
All of this information means little to me because I’m not an audio expert. So I couldn’t tell you without some extensive research why all this is important. What I can tell you is that the mic works very well and it picks up my voice clearly and I don’t have to worry about whether or not my teammates can hear me speak. I think that’s what’s most important here.
The cable length for the microphone is about 8.2 feet which is plenty long. Long enough to not present the issues I have had with any of the wired gaming headsets I’ve tried over the years.
Meze Audio Boom Mic Review: Compatibility
It’s a piece of wired equipment, so it’ll work with essentially anything that has a 3.5mm audio port. That includes PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, mobile, and PC. Whatever platform you play games on, if there’s a place to plug in a wired headset, this mic will work for you. Now do you need the clearest comms possible on something like the Nintendo Switch? Probably not.
The Switch doesn’t exactly have a huge competitive multiplayer scene compared to PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. That’s not to say there are no competitive multiplayer games. There are. However, I don’t see the Nintendo Switch as the go-to platform where you see lots of competitive high-level play where team communication needs to be high quality. Still, the mic works and if you want a decent mic for comms on Nintendo Switch, this will serve that purpose.
For all other platforms, I feel it’s necessary to make it clear that this mic could in fact help you win more. It’s not going to improve your gameplay skills for you. It won’t make you a better shot or increase your ability to dodge enemy fire. What it will do is ensure your teammates can hear you properly. And if you have that, it just might mean the difference between a teammate getting the drop on an enemy because they heard exactly what you said about where that enemy is coming from, and them getting taken out because your voice wasn’t clear enough.
Meze Audio Boom Mic Review: Price Point
You may not think about how much a mic costs when you buy a gaming headset because all gaming headsets come with a mic. They’re either built-in, or they’re detachable and come in the box. But as I mentioned earlier this is a product for people who prefer wired headphones that weren’t first and foremost designed for gaming.
That very nature means you have to consider the cost of both the headphones you’re using with this mic as well as the cost of the mic. Because the two together are what you’re looking at for your overall cost. $79 isn’t necessarily good or bad because it really all depends on what you want or can spend. And with the Boom Mic from Meze you don’t have to use them with a pair of headphones like the 99 Classic which are $309. However, even using them with the 99 Neo which is $199, still puts this combination at upwards of $300. And the reality, I think, is that most gamers are probably fine with something that works well enough if it means they save some money.
I came to this conclusion after talking with several friends about the cost of the Boom Mic plus the headphones you need to use it with. And all of them said the same thing – that they could just buy a proper gaming headset that comes with a mic for at least $80 to $100 less. Then again, Meze isn’t really trying to capture this market. It’s going directly after the consumer who appreciates, wants, or maybe even already owns a pair of high-quality audiophile headphones. For those consumers, the Boom Mic presents a solution to the problem of using those nicer headphones for game chat. Of course, the boom mic can also be used for voice calls and video conferencing. So if that’s what your needs are, the $79 price is pretty good. Especially if it means you don’t have to buy a gaming headset that could cost $200 when the boom mic will do.
Should you buy the Meze Audio Boom Mic?
Like I said above, this really all depends on what you’re looking for. If you already own a pair of nice, high-quality wired headphones, and they have a mono dual 3.5mm connection, then you should absolutely consider this mic. That is if you also play games or need something for voice calls and want to use those headphones for those purposes.
Meze has created a well-rounded, high-quality solution for people squarely in this camp. While I still think my personal preference leans towards the convenience of a wireless gaming headset with a good mic, there’s definitely a market for wired headphones that use a boom mic like the one Meze is now offering. Plus, there’s the added benefit of no audio latency both for the game audio and your voice. So, should you spend the money on this?
You should buy the Meze Audio Boom Mic if:
- You’re looking to buy wired audiophile headphones that can also be used for gaming or voice calls/video conferencing
- You already own a pair of wired audiophile headphones and need a gaming mic
You shouldn’t buy the Meze Audio Boom Mic if:
- You prefer a wireless pair of headphones or a wireless gaming headset
- You don’t want to spend upwards of $300-$400
- You’re looking for something that’s built-in
