Epos has established that it can produce some very good gaming headsets like the Sennheiser GSP 602, but skillfully handling what goes into your ears isn’t the same as capturing what comes out of your mouth. The Epos B20 is the company’s first USB microphone, and at $199 it’s positively loaded with features including multiple pickup patterns and a headphone jack with real-time monitoring. It’s also one of the most finicky mics we’ve tested, requiring much more experimentation with positioning and gain, as well as caution against outside noise, to record quality sound. It works well once you’ve hammered out those details, but it requires a lot more hand-holding than most of the mics we test.
A Basic Black Design
The B20 is a 9.4-inch-long black metal cylinder measuring 4.4 inches across, with a metal grille wrapping around the top panel and the top thirds of the sides. The controls are placed somewhat unconventionally on the sides, with a mute button and headphone volume knob on the front and a gain knob and four-way mode knob on the back, out of sight. The gain and volume knobs turn freely and have no hard stops or indicators of where the settings currently are. This is particularly frustrating with gain, because there is no sense of how high it is until you test the audio. A USB-C port sits on the bottom panel of the cylinder, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The microphone comes mounted on a black metal table stand consisting of a circular base and a simple, thin neck on the left, on which the cylinder can tilt. At first glance, the mic seems to be permanently attached to the stand, but that only applies to the neck. A large screw on the underside of the base can be removed to pull the neck off, revealing a 3/8-inch screw mount for using the mic on a boom arm, though the design seems to preclude the use of a shock mount.
Behind the metal grille, the B20 houses three condenser capsules that can be set to four different pickup patterns: cardioid, bidirectional, omnidirectional, and stereo. It samples at 24 bits and 48kHz, with a frequency response of 50Hz to 20kHz.
Awkward Adjustments
The Epos Gaming Suite software for Windows 10 adds some useful features to the B20, albeit with limitations. You can use it to adjust gain (and see a slider to indicate just what the mic’s gain is currently set at), side tone, noise gate, and noise cancellation, and toggle a high-pass filter and voice enhancer. You can also switch between stereo and 7.1 channel simulated surround sound with any wired headphones connected to the mic.
Unfortunately, all of these features are only accessible when the B20 is set as the default audio output device. If you want to monitor your PC audio through any other audio connection besides the mic’s headphone jack, the software will lock out all of those settings.
Finding the Sweet Spot
The B20’s noise cancellation failed to impress in test recordings. My notebook fan tends to run a bit loudly, and with noise cancellation set to maximum, test recordings near my desk captured the fan buzz as a very noticeable layer of white noise. The HyperX QuadCast S also picked up some slight buzz in the same scenario, but it was much less pronounced, and without any noise cancellation enabled.
The audio quality of the test recordings didn’t wow me much either, especially at first. The B20’s gain feels much more fiddly than other microphones I’ve tested, with some wild changes in sound sensitivity. Epos recommends setting the gain to 50% (visible only through the software), and speaking about seven inches from the microphone. Those recordings sounded a bit flat, lacking any sense of crispness or lower-frequency resonance in my voice.
I had more luck turning the gain down to 30% and speaking about four inches from the microphone. Here it picked up more detail in my words, including a hint of edge in harder consonants. Finding the sweet spot made the B20 sound quite good, though not amazing; it’s certainly more robust than you’ll get from a gaming headset mic, but it doesn’t distinguish itself against most other USB mics we’ve tested, especially in this price range.
The multiple capsule modes of the mic worked well in testing, with stereo capture producing good left-right imaging.
Functional, But Fussy
The Epos B20 is a serviceable USB microphone, but its modest audio quality doesn’t justify its $200 price, even with its four capsule configurations and headphone jack for mic monitoring. The controls and app are both a bit awkward, and test recordings failed to impress in clarity or noise cancellation. For $160, the Blue Yeti X offers useful LED live metering, while the HyperX QuadCast S features a customizable light show that might appeal to streamers (but foregoes multiple patterns in favor of only cardioid), and both sound better than the B20. Meanwhile, for around half the price of the B20, the Blue Yeti Nano and the JLab Talk Pro both feature strong performance in small form factors, ideal if you want a more mobile recording or streaming kit.
