Closer Examination

The Movo UM700 leaves a good first impression. The matte black color scheme makes it look professional, and the factory-attached metal stand gives it weight, which we usually associate with high-quality audio products.


The base of the metal stand is wide and exceptionally stable. Its bottom is protected with a layer of dense foam, which will prevent it from scratching the surface you put the microphone on. The factory-adjusted height of the microphone, while affixed to the stand, is spot on. You can place it between yourself and your keyboard, and it will be high enough to pick up your voice with no issues related to off-axis positioning, while not interfering with your view of the monitor. This is something many other manufacturers struggle with when adding table stands to their USB microphones. They regularly sit too low; in other words, too far away from our mouth, which greatly decreases the sound quality and makes buying a boom arm almost mandatory. Not so with the Movo UM700—you'll never have to take it off of its stand if you do not want to.


If you decide to place the Movo UM700 on a boom arm, you can simply unscrew the two screws which affix it to its stand. This can be done without using any tools, although you should turn the microphone upside down first. That makes the screws much looser and easier to remove.


The stand of course allows us to swivel the microphone to any desirable angle. However, do keep in mind that this is a side-address microphone, so you have to talk into its side. I'm pointing this out because some users might be inclined to talk into the top of the Movo UM700 since it sort of looks like an oversized handheld microphone. While the stand certainly allows you to swivel it into that position, the built-in capsules are located above the printed "Movo" logo, so that's the part of the microphone that should be pointing toward your mouth.


The capsules are hidden behind a dense metal grille. The body of the microphone is made out of sturdy matte black plastic, which doesn't take anything away from its overall ruggedness. For an even more studio-like look, the head of the microphone can be protected with the supplied foam pop filter. Of course, its purpose isn't only decorative; it's there to remove any popping noise caused by plosives.


On the bottom of the Movo UM700 microphone is a Micro-USB port (nowadays a USB-C port would be more appropriate), standard 5/8" mounting thread used by boom arms, and 3.5-mm headphone output. The headphone output is for direct microphone monitoring. After connecting a pair of headphones to this port, you'll hear everything picked up by the microphone's capsules in real time, with no perceivable delay. You can use the front-facing volume knob to adjust the volume of the microphone's headphone output. The knob itself feels cheap, almost like it could be unscrewed when lowering the volume, but it gets the job done. You can select the Movo UM700 as your default playback device in the Windows/macOS sound settings, too. Doing so reroutes all system sounds to the microphone's headphone output as well, which can help you get a better understanding of how loud or quiet your voice is in relation to all other sounds coming from your system.


Above the aforementioned volume dial is a microphone mute button. When pressed, a red LED in its center indicates that the microphone is no longer picking up sound. Each press of the mute button gets picked up by the capsules and can be heard as a short "knock," which I've demonstrated in the following sample. I didn't find it annoying and never got complaints from people I've chatted with, but that doesn't change the fact that the mute button isn't "silent." Not that it's a realistic expectation for an $80 microphone, but a capacitive mute button would be an obvious way to avoid this issue.




On the rear of the microphone, Movo placed a gain dial that feels just as cheap as the volume one, though having one is great because it lets us quickly adjust the volume of our voice without clumsily digging through the Windows/macOS/VoIP application settings. During everyday usage, I kept it in the middle of its range and occasionally made minor adjustments in relation to ambient noise and my sitting position, which had an impact on the distance between my mouth and the microphone. Finally, below the gain dial is where you'll find the pickup pattern switch. It has four positions it clicks into and requires quite a lot of force to rotate, so chances you'll change the polar pattern by accident are slim to none. The four polar patterns are cardioid, omnidirectional, stereo, and bi-directional. More on them in the microphone performance section of this review.