Elgato Wave:3 microphone day 1 review – worth the wait

The anticipated Project WAVE is here! Today, the Elgato WAVE:3 microphone has been released. We got our hands on this a little early, so we’ve got all the details on what ultimately amounts to an awesome piece of kit.

Elgato WAVE:3 microphone

Like all cool Elgato products, it comes in a nice box with all fancy things.

First thing you’ll notice when you open the box is a good long USB cable. It’s USB-C, making it future-proof and providing great communication stability. The thick cable is perfect for running up and along a boom arm and allows for getting squished under arm clips. Oh, and it definitely comes with a boom arm attachment.

The WAVE desk mount sits neatly and inconspicuously with any setup. The LED dial on the front shows creators exactly what gain you’ll have and allows you to choose among mic, headphones, and mixer with the touch of a button. Its swivel mount is useful for directing the sound precisely to where you want it. There’s a touch-sensitive mute bar on the top of the mic. This allows you to quickly tap your hand on top of the mic to turn off audio. In mute mode, the large LED dial button at the front goes red, making it easy to tell when you’ve muted yourself. No more starting streams with a muted microphone!

Overall, the design is beautiful. It’s sleek, compact, and “techy.” It’s got a lovely feel to it and fits in well with the rest of the Elgato product line, like the Dark Core or Stream Deck XL. And speaking of the Stream Deck, there’s integration with the WAVE and Stream Deck.

Sound quality and streaming

If you add in your microphone to your streaming software, it works pretty well straight out of the box. Add on a few of your usual software filters and you’ve got some really great sound. It might not take out the sound of a mechanical keyboard, but then there’s really no mic that will. You will, however, get crisp, clear sound, free from background noise like computer fans.

You can level up your content creation with Elgato’s WAVE Link software. It’s your digital mixer, with channels, monitor mixer, and stream mixer. You can easily switch between listening and streaming and changing the audio levels for each input — game, music, chat, etc. The Wave Link software is really intuitive and easy to use.

The usuals and the extras

Like all good quality mics, the Elgato WAVE:3 comes with some sweet features. It’s about the same size and weight as other mics on the market. The “capsule” space of the mic has a condenser, providing that crisp, clear sound we talked about above. There’s an internal pop filter to keep those pesky plosives at bay. And if the built-in filter isn’t enough, then you can grab an external pop filter, as well as a shock mount to up your game further.

Seriously, this thing has lots of extras. Its compact size packs a punch, but you’ll be paying for it. At $159.99 USD ($289 AUD) without extras, it definitely sits in the upper price bracket.

It’s available today, and you can find out more on Project WAVE over on the official website.