The Trio USB condenser microphone is the latest to the huge range of microphones from MXL and comes supplied with a handy tripod.

This gives the unit a compelling professional feel and it's easy to set up; just plug the mic into the nearest USB 2.0 socket, choose it as the input source on your computer and you're ready for work.

The Trio includes a headphone socket on the rear, but in our tests with several headphones we couldn't achieve a signal level that was truly useful. Results were reasonable for spoken voice and acoustic guitar and certainly much better than the built-in mic on a MacBook Pro.