Every review here starts from one model and the numbers its maker publishes for it. Sensitivity, frequency response, impedance, weight — each is taken with the measurement conditions attached, because a figure without them cannot be compared to anything.
The same numbers are then read back against every other model of the same class collected on this site, so a specification stops being a lone value and becomes a position in a row: how much lighter, how much more sensitive, how much narrower.
Where the maker's document and the retail listing disagree, the review says so and names both. Where a figure exists only on a dealer page and nowhere in the manufacturer's own material, the review says that too, rather than attributing it to the maker.
What you will not find is a verdict on how something sounds. We do not take delivery of test units, so anything that requires listening is out of scope, and saying otherwise would be an invention. What is here is the paperwork, read carefully.
Apple's specification page uses the word driver once and gives no diameter. What AirPods Max publishes, what it does not, and where 20 hours puts it against the class.
Gen 3 and Gen 4 share nine technical rows word for word and differ only in the cable in the box. What $129.99 buys, and where the model still sells.
The HS5 listing carries two low-frequency figures where its siblings carry one, and only one of the two is Yamaha’s. That makes most comparisons of this monitor wrong.
Rated 4.1 by 403 owners, and 50 of them gave one star: 12.4% against a median of 2.8%. The numbers are ordinary; the split is not on the datasheet.
3.2 from 78 owners with nineteen one-star ratings: the lowest average of any card here with a real sample. What $248 buys at 5.9 g, and the condition the listing leaves off.
The lowest output of any dynamic microphone in our set: 1.12 mV/Pa, 25 dB below the median condenser. What that costs in preamp gain, and what it buys.
Middling on every comparable figure, and one that almost nobody publishes: 20 dB down at the rear. What that number decides, and what 165 owners left out.
55 Hz to 14 kHz, narrower than any other dynamic here, and a response Shure shaped for a voice rather than extended. $69, no controls, one switch on the SM48S.
$54 with a cable, 2.5 dB hotter than the SM58, and the highest low-frequency floor of any dynamic here. Discontinued on both sides while the price stayed in the markup.
Two diaphragms, 2.66 mV/Pa and a retail page that states the same sensitivity twice, 3.1 dB apart. Where a $439 handheld dynamic sits among 28.
$1,249.00 is the top of the list of 28 dynamic microphones here, and the next figure is $449. What the money buys, and what it does not.
Low cut, a −10 dB pad and a pattern switch on a handheld: 152 dB of headroom for $453, and 21 dB(A) of noise floor as the price.
4 dB A-weighted is the lowest self-noise of the 34 microphones here that publish one, and $141 includes the mount, the pop filter and a cable.
144 dB at half a per cent, 12 dB of noise on one scale and 21 on another, and the standards named under the table. What $799 buys, and what it lacks.
Average on every specification we can compare, and that is the honest finding. The case for the M50x is its position in its own family, not its numbers.
The listing calls it large-diaphragm and prints 15.2 mm two rows down. What $99 buys: 144 dB at a stated threshold, 20 dB of noise, XLR only.
MicTested