There are a ton of options out there
when it comes to microphone boom arms, and while traditional tall boom
arm options like this are probably the most common, and I love them,
sometimes they can cause some problems. They can take up some space in your frame
right here, sort of cluttering things up. They can block stuff. They can potentially
block the money maker. Now, I'm not going to make
any money, because, anyway. If you don't want to use a tall boom
arm for one reason or another, then a low profile boom arm is the way to go. There are a bunch of different
options, but I think that the Elgato low profile is definitely one of,
if not the best overall, because it offers a lot of flexibility. A lot of decent features and it comes in
at a decent price with an MSRP of just 99. But you might be saying, wait, didn't
you already talk about the Elgato profile, low profile, low arm when it
came out like two and a half years ago? Yes, I did. That's this one right here, which I
purchased back in September of 2021. And this one over here, I
purchased in February of 2024. The reason being. They've made some changes and pretty much
addressed all of the critiques that I had with the original low profile arm. And basically what I said at the time is
that this is a fantastic boom arm, but it does have a few sort of usability, quality
of life things that sort of bothered me. And then Elgato themselves left some
comments on a few of my recent videos letting me know that they changed things. I also had a few other people send me
messages and photos and videos showing that there were changes to the arm. So I decided to order one for myself. And double check those changes,
it turns out pretty darn cool. So, the low profile arm, if you don't
know what it is, it is a low profile arm. That means the whole point of it is that
it does not take up a bunch of space up high, but it can sit low to the desk. That means you could potentially
have it run under a monitor, under a display, something like that. You can also then mount a
variety of microphones on it without it blocking your face. I have these two mounted right to
my side, which is a little unusual. It'd probably be typically mounted more
off to your side, or a lot of people have them sort of under their camera and
then the microphone comes out over here. This is for, you know,
demonstration purposes for the sake of this comparison video. I always appreciate that Elgato's
arms are made out of good materials. They arm themselves with strong materials. Strong arm? There's a joke there somewhere. And that includes the mounting
clamps right here, which are a very important part of a boom arm. What I like about them is they
have a very strong lever, which has a ratcheting function. So if you're in a tight space, you
don't have to just keep turning this. You can kind of turn it,
ratchet it, turn it, ratchet it. And the top and the bottom are also
rubber padded, so when you're clamping it to your desk, it's not going
to chomp out chunks of your desk. My wooden tabletops here do have various
marks and scratches and claw marks from different boom arms I've attached
to them over the years that didn't always have that level of protection. Sometimes I even find
myself adding that in. Afterwards with like sticky pads
and things to help protect my desk, but the Elgato's, you don't gado do
that because it just comes that way. Another thing about Elgato arms,
both the low profile and the tall wave arm that I showed you earlier,
is they do have this proprietary mount here, which I like overall. The one thing I'm not a huge fan
with, and the one fan of, and the thing that they didn't change,
is this little nubbin right here. at the front. There's not much else
that can attach to this. So if you don't want to use their ball
mount, you're not going to have a ball because there's nothing else you can use. You kind of got to use theirs. And well, as you can see, mine
hasn't broken or had any issues because it's pretty darn well made. If you do have one that breaks or has
issues, you're going to have to get a replacement part directly from Elgato
because nothing else, no ball head, no other mount is going to fit on there. And then it does have a Quarter 20
mount by default, and it comes with some adapters, so that way you can
do 5 8ths or 3 8ths mic mounts. But I think Elgato did that quarter
20, as I've said in other videos, because they also want to make sure
you could use their mic arms for other things like lights and cameras. Not that these would hold a super heavy,
you know, cinema camera or anything necessarily, although I have seen
some people who have put, you know, pretty big cameras and even the Elgato
prompter on an arm like this, so hey. It could be possible, but if you want to
do like a small camera, streaming camera, small light, or something like that,
you can also use that with these arms. That quarter twenty mount adds
some versatility for that. But obviously it's really
intended as a microphone arm, and that's where it shines. It's great because you have
this nice rotation, and then you can also lift it and lower it. So even though it is a low profile arm, It
doesn't mean the mic can't go high at all. You could potentially even
use this, depending on your height, if you're standing up. And going back to this ball mount
here, it is a ball mount so it's very easy to position the mic. I wanted to use these Lewitt mics
specifically in this example because I've talked about them before. They are condenser mics that
have very specific shock mounts. And on a lot of other boom arms,
especially even like the Rode arms, which I love quite a bit, it's very
tough if the arm is coming at an angle from the side, it's very tough
to position the mic where you want it because it's sort of forced to be facing
forward, but I'm, like, over here. Because of this ball mount, it's
very easy for me to position this microphone in this very specific
shock mount any direction that I want. And then the shock mount itself,
of course, I can raise and lower to get things dialed in exactly right. So, I really love that. You do have cable routing in the arm. And, I mean, it's an arm. It's pretty simple. Let's though, now though, talk about
the differences between the arm that was originally released when they
announced it and the one that you would get now if you ordered it. Or if you have one like me and
you're kind of frustrated by it and you didn't realize they changed
it, here are a few of the changes. You might be able to notice right
here is a pretty big change. There is now a knob instead
of just an allen key. thingy here. So if you wanted to adjust the tension
of the raising and lowering of the top arm, originally you had to use
an Allen key, which they provide you. So it's not a big deal. And you know, if you've ever put
together a piece of Ikea furniture, you probably have an Allen key around too. And now, as you can see on this one,
there is just a big plastic knob so I can loosen this, tighten it,
change the tension and the friction. Overall, I think this is a big improvement
because now you can adjust the mic arm without needing a separate tool. And that just makes things really easy. Even during the middle of a project,
a stream, a broadcast, whatever, You can make an adjustment on the fly. This is a subtle change,
but it's a good one. I don't know if you can notice it, but
on the original arm, my XLR cable is popping out the top here and going down. On the new one, it's popping out
the bottom and going into the mic. They've now added an additional routing
hole on the bottom of the top arm, so you can choose to have your XLR cable
come out the bottom or out the top because that top hole is still there. And that's great because a microphone like
this It works much better and keeps things much neater if I can come out the bottom
So that way I don't have this extra cable kind of running and getting bent there But
if you're using other microphones where the cable attaches to the rear of the
actual microphone's housing Then running the cable out from the top is the way to
go So just a bit more versatility built in which I like quite a bit and the main
upgrade that really attracted me To trying out the new boom arm is this right here
stronger magnets in the cable routing. This was probably the weakest
point of the boom arm. You have this XLR cable
routing, which is awesome. It's excellent. And it's held in with these
little magnet channels. So you run your cables through here. There's plenty of room to run USB, XLR,
a couple of cables at the same time. And you've got this little magnetic
cover, this metal magnetic cover. that attaches on top. The downside is, as soon as
you want to adjust your your cable, that's what happens. And if you're one of, if you own
one of the original versions of the arm, you know that frustration. That was something I talked
about in my original review. It is so annoying to have
that cover pop off constantly. Sometimes I've just put
little velcro straps there. Which is fine, but then it kind of
like, you sort of lose the slickness of having magnets, because now I'm using
like a bungee cable or a velcro cable. The updated arm has significantly,
wait, significantly stronger magnets. It's kind of hard to communicate that
through video, where you can't physically be here feeling it for yourself. But if you can kind of see, if
I lift up these XLR cables, see how quickly that one popped out. And this one actually, Oh, I can't get
the XLR cable to open the magnet, so that's, uh, that's, that's pretty good. And that's really gonna be the biggest
quality of life feature because anytime you're dealing with routing or kind of
changing some of your cable, adding some slack, adding some tension, even sometimes
on this one, if your cable's a little like a little too tense and then you move the
arm in a certain way it can kind of like pop that off and it Is as you can hear
loud and very frustrating and that's not just not a ton of fun And as I alluded
to at the beginning of the video there are other options when it comes to low
profile mic arms But I find that they're either one extreme or the other some
of them are so premium incredibly high quality But also really expensive where
I or you might not want to spend three or four hundred dollars on a low profile arm,
and then the flip side to that are, you know, the bargain bin ones that seem like
a good deal because they're like 25 or something, but then they just completely
fall apart, and that's also not great. I've done a video in the past about
cheap versus expensive boom arms and what you're getting for when you pay
that difference because even though they might look the same, They are definitely
not created the same, and that's why I think the Elgato low profile arm,
if you're looking for a low profile arm, is really in that sweet spot. Good build quality, decent price, MSRP
of 99, but it's sturdy, it's strong, it's stable, it's something you can rely on. The fact that the one I bought two
and a half years ago works exactly the same and functions exactly the
same as it did the day I got it. is a really good thing. My wife also has one in her studio
that she's been using for several years, too, and hers works perfectly. She's used it a lot more than I have
mine, and it still holds up great. And The main point in making this video
is to kind of point out that all of those things that I complained about
and the issues especially mainly the magnetic covers that I talked about in
my original video of the low profile arm have now been totally revised and fixed
over here in the new version, which again I don't even know when this switched. It could have been like a year and a half
ago, but Currently, if you're buying an Elgato low profile arm, it's going to
have all these quality of life upgrades. I do have the white one here, just
because I already had a black one and I wanted something different. It does also still come in black. You don't have to get the bright white,
potentially overexposed on camera version. If you don't want it. But speaking of things I do want, I
do want to say thank you to everyone who helps support my channel through
Patreon and YouTube channel memberships. And believe it or not, the
world of microphone boom arms is shockingly rich and complex. It's varied. There are a lot of options out there. So if you want to learn more
about boom arms, check out one of these videos right here.
