Best overall $50 budget microphone in 2022?! (FIFINE K683A Review)

Who's the FOTO FAME with your boy Eddy Herrera here also known as Eddy's FOTO. How are you all doing today? About a month or two ago, I reviewed a FIFINE microphone. I reviewed the K669G. This was a gaming microphone for laptops and PCs. But Fifine said, hey, we got to step it up a little bit. I have here the K683A. This is also a PC and laptop microphone, but is it any better? Well, let's find out.

When taking off the lid, we're greeted with a nice greeting card and the user manual. With another quick peek, I have here the microphone. Compared to the last one, the FIFINE K683A is a little bit thicker. They both feel solid. They're made out of hard aluminum or plastic, but this new FIFINE microphone just feels like a better, solid build. Something that you may have already noticed is that the K669G has a wire attached to it. It's kind of funky, and I'm not a huge fan of that, because it's finicky. But on this new one, the connection is at the bottom, and you can take it off, so this one already wins it for me.

Coming into the rest of the box, you have another box, which I'm assuming has all the cables in it. Coming into the cables, you have a USB and USB-C connecting to a USB-B. We literally have A, B, and C. I can't make that up. We're playing alphabets with these things, guys. Along in the box, you get a pretty hefty 5/8 tripod stand that has interchangeable feet, so you could pop them right off, prevent it from sliding off the table. They're pretty nice. And then, you get the dual layer pop filter. Why is it dual layered? Well, there is one layer of pop filter, as well as a second one, dual being two, dual layered dual decks. Enough with the unboxing. Let's get into how the FIFINE K683A sounds.

Now, I'm going to switch to the FIFINE K683A at about a gain control of 25% and about six inches away from my mouth. Alright, obviously, this is a cardioid microphone, so you want to do your best to isolate the microphone as close to your mouth as possible. Cardioid microphones do better jobs at picking up sounds right in front of them. The microphone now is about three inches away from my mouth. If I say things like potato or button, there is a little bit of a pop, so let me put the pop filter on. Now, with the pop filter on, the popping is reduced. Note that this microphone is pretty big. It is covering half my face. I look like a UNCLEAR is here. Obviously, if you're just live streaming or gaming, it doesn't really matter, especially if you don't have a webcam on.

Watch the demo from 3:45 to 4:16.

Overall, the sound quality of this actually sounds pretty good. Let me turn up the gain to about 50% to show you what that sounds like. Now, it's about three inches away from my mouth. It's going to get pretty loud, so let me bring you back. Here, if I keep the FIFINE K683A about six inches away from my mouth, it sounds pretty good. Obviously, you're going to start picking up a little bit more background noise. For most people, it's not an issue, but if you are trying to get the best possible sound quality, then, I recommend keeping it as close to your mouth as possible. Alright, after a lot of finicking, I realized that the best gain control and space given between my mouth and the microphone is a gain control at around 33% to 50% and about one to two inches away from my mouth. This personally, to me, is the best audio quality.

Now, again, what can you use the FIFINE K683A for? Well, Zoom calls. You can do conference meetings. You can do gaming and live streaming. There are a lot of things you can do with this microphone. But real quick, before we get into the gaming aspect of this, I want to deal with the one negative of this microphone that I really do not like, and that is the feedback given to the microphone when you physically touch it. If I touch the stand real quick, there are a couple of thuds. If I touch the microphone, again, there is a lot of feedback on it. One thing you can do to fix this is to actually buy a shock mount. Personally, I don't really want to get one of those. I already have a bunch of stands that I like to use, and I also don't really need to touch my microphone unless I'm swinging my arms around. There's not much I could do. Maybe if I'm grabbing my drink and bumping it, then it could probably give some feedback. But overall, it's not really an issue with me.

Overall, it sounded pretty good. I would definitely use this for live streaming and gaming. For $50 (prices may change), the FIFINE K683A is probably one of the best "bang for your buck" sets that you can get. Here is something else around $50 (prices may change), and that is the Blue Snowball. I have the Ice version.

Around the same price, the FIFINE K683A offers a lot more features such as built-in audio monitoring, so you can plug in headphones into the microphone. I personally don't do this, but that's an option. As well, you have gain control, a mute button, and a pop filter that's provided in the packaging, so pretty good stuff.

Watch the demo from 8:07 to 8:25.

The last thing I'm going to say is that the FIFINE K683A is a cardioid microphone, but you can use it for conference calls and Zoom calls. I'm going to show you what it sounds like when I'm a little bit farther away. Alright, so I'm actually about two and a half feet away. If you are in a conference call, this is not a bad idea if you don't care about the sound quality. You can hear a lot more background noise. If we're just using this for casual gaming, you just want it on your desk, and you don't really care about the cardioid functionality, then this is just fine.

Overall, is the FIFINE K683A trash or pass? I'm going to give it a big pass. Coming at around $50 (prices may change), this is one of the best "bang for your buck" microphones that you can get. I'm going to put the link to this microphone here if you want to pick one up. This video is not sponsored. FIFINE just sent it out to me to test. I wanted to tell you guys about it. FIFINE has been a pretty good company to me so, I might keep reviewing them. We'll see.

Thank you guys so much for watching. If you guys enjoyed this video or if you have a question about the FIFINE K683A, drop it in the comments here, and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Subscribe now to be a part of the FOTO FAM. I'll catch you guys in the next video whenever that is. So far, the growth is actually getting pretty good. I appreciate all your comments. You all mean a lot to me. I appreciate all your support. I'm going to try to keep it up as best as I can. Thank you all so much. I'll catch you guys in the next video whenever that is. Peace out guys. Take it easy. Bye.