Jaro J101-CS microphone – pleasantly surprised
I want you to know, up front, that I use several USB microphones, various audio interfaces, and “Pro” grade dynamic, ribbon, and condenser microphones. I’ve been around the microphone block, so to speak, but I’m always interested in where the consumer USB tech is headed to the ‘everyperson.’This is a colorful microphone with several controls on the mic body itself. It comes with a pop filter that looks the part, but did not eliminate plosives on my admittedly rough test — it’s likely good enough for general use, especially at the price point. It has RGB on the front and back of the mic body, which is . . . possibly fun as a thing on your desk. It has a gain knob on the top, a built-in headphone jack on the back with a Monitor (volume) knob on the bottom, an integrated desk stand with some isolation designed in, and a switch selector for multiple pickup patterns (Cardioid, Omni, and Figure 8). The top gain control, which is a wide disk format knob, will mute the mic when you touch it. Unfortunately, the mute, while effective with no electronic pop, always transmitted handling noise from the tap. When muted the mic flashes red to off.Touching the bottom shifts between different RGB modes. There is a cycle mode, and several solid colors to choose from. I could detect no differences in audio quality based on the color of the RGB output, not that I expected any, but it was good to confirm. The RGB can be turned off and on by touching the bottom for a few seconds.It looks like the Jaro is targeted toward the ‘gamer’ market, but it’s somewhat ‘cheap’ sounding. Now that’s a statement I’d like to expound on, because I grew up with carbon mic devices we used to torture low quality voice recordings from with our mono cassette players — some of which had a little counter and were therefore “feature rich” in our minds.This is not such a device, and “cheap sounding” today is mind blowing compared to yesteryear’s consumer audio market.I compared the Jaro mic with my older Yeti mic (not the more recent version) as a control. I set both to a cardoid pattern, and adjusted the gain so that they had roughly the same signal going into my DAW. The gain on the Jaro was higher to have parity with the Yeti, so Jaro has less potential gain, but this also means you may be less likely to have a distorted mess from inexpert but well intentioned use.I did some capture comparisons with voice and using a static audio segment played through a decent desktop speaker. The Yeti has exceptional sound quality, but it’s also fairly common which is why I used it for comparison. This mic sounded a tiny bit like a cardboard tube, with the lowest and highest frequencies attenuated and a boost in the lower midrange. It sounded ok by itself to a non-audio geek, but compared unfavorably to the Yeti control mic.The different polar patterns produced best quality from the front of the mic no matter which pattern was selected, with the Omni and Figure 8 creating discernible differences from other directions.In fairness, the Yeti is a more expensive microphone, and the comparison is thus not apples to apples. In fairness it’s more like apples to apple ice cream.The ultimate question is would I use this over what I have? The answer is maybe — the sound isn’t quite as good, but it’s for streaming and not voice over (and the Yeti isn’t really for that per se either). It does look “fun”I tested this mic recording into my DAW, and was very credible at the price point. I tested it with zoom and had several critical listeners comment — they thought it sounded good. Compared to my Yeti, they didn’t have a preference. To be fair, they liked my SM7B best, but that’s completely unfair as a comparison. So I wouldn’t use this for personal projects, but to sit on my desk at work for zooming I will.4/5 for the price point.

Great mic for the price
I’ve been really happy with this mic. I use it for discord conversations and zoom calls for my work. The only mic I’ve never gotten a complaint about. I have 4-5 other mics and always kept going back to my Maono, but I think it’s retired now. The only thing that bothers me about the mic is the mute RGB blinking red. I like to keep my mic muted when not in use so there’s always a blinking red light on my desk when I’m not on a call.