Sennheiser Profile USB microphone review

The Profile USB microphone (odd name) we have with us comes with a boom arm and a 3m USB Type-C cable. Setting up the Sennheiser Profile USB microphone is as simple as opening a fridge. All you have to do is screw the mounting bracket on your table (no drilling required), run the 3-meter cable along with recessed slots within the boom arm and mount the microphone. You simply have to move the boom arm as you wish to adjust it and it will automatically lock in place. The boom arm doesn’t have screws for locking it in place. Just use a bit of strength to move it to your desired position and it will stay locked. The whole process barely takes 10mins to get started.

The Sennheiser Profile USB microphone is device agnostic and truly plug-and-play. We tried it with Android, iOS, Windows and MacOS, and this thing works flawlessly. Gain and Mix control are all on the device itself so you really don’t need software to adjust your settings. Clever.

Subtle nuances of your voices are picked effortlessly. The delivery is clean and without any pop or plosives. Sennheiser says you don’t need a pop filter because the condenser grille is good enough to do the job and for folks starting out on a budget, it’s darn good in our opinion. You can check out this Reel video where we added a voice-over using the Sennheiser microphone. This audio was captured from 6 inches away from the microphone, as dictated by the brand, but if you happen to be somewhere around 12 inches or more from the mic, it will sound something like this. Both these Reel videos are a great example to see how the Sennheiser captures your voice. The closer you are, the warmer and more textured your voice will sound and the further you go, the gain will capture more noise from the background. 

As for a gaming setup, being 6inches away from the microphone is a bit difficult without having the boom arm obstruct the screen. It’s also a side-address mic which means you’ll need to have the side of the button facing you at all times. 

The buttons on the microphone pretty much provide everything you need to get started. There’s a noiseless mute button with a LED ring. Red means mute, orange indicates clipping and green means no clipping. There’s a main control dial along with PC/Mic mix control and headphone volume control. The rear side has a 3.5mm headphone jack for voice monitoring with zero latency which is fantastic.

For anyone starting out with a streaming or podcast career, the Sennheiser microphone is an absolute bang for your buck. If you’re constantly switching between PC and mobile devices to record sessions then it is ideally suited for that purpose. We did get irked by the lack of a dedicated software support but that’s fine because all the necessary audio controls are on the microphone itself. Which, in hindsight, is actually better. Only the Sennheiser comes with three physical dials for audio control which lets you tweak settings on the fly in this budget range.

We haven’t even mentioned that the KE 10 Cardioid condenser capsule is sitting inside this microphone and from what we’ve recorded so far, it’s the real reason why the Sennheiser Profile USB microphone delivers impressive quality.