After lots of testing, we find the ATR2100 & AT2005 are the best for both quality and cost-effectiveness.
ATR2100 USB Test Audio
I'm going to talk about a combination. I'm combining two different microphones from one manufacturer into this next section because they're essentially the same microphone. One's a retail version and one is a commercial version. There are a couple of differences in what comes in the box and a slight difference in price, but they're very similar microphones. The first one is called the ATR2100. The AT is for Audio-Technica, which is the manufacturer or more of the importer of this. It's a company out of Massachusetts, although these are made in China. They import them. The ATR2100, the last time I checked the price on Amazon was $69.99. It's $10 more expensive than the last microphone I was talking about. Similarly, it's a cardioid dynamic microphone. It's silver in color. The retail packaging is very plasticky as though it is meant to hang on a rack in the aisles at Target or Best Buy or something. It has that little metal piece sticking out from the pegboard that you're going to hang these on. It's that type of packaging. The plastic packaging is cheap. It may be part of the reason why it's a little less expensive than the commercial version, which is indifferent packaging...LEARN MORE