Do I need a microphone or is my phone good enough?

The reason the built in microphone struggles is distance and direction. It sits in the device, which is usually a metre or more away, and it picks up everything in the room including reflections from hard surfaces. That produces the hollow quality that makes a recording tiring to listen to even when the words are clear.

The cheapest genuine improvement costs nothing if you already own wired earphones with a microphone, since that puts the capsule close to your mouth and away from the room. It is not elegant on camera and it is a substantial upgrade on a laptop microphone, which is worth knowing before spending anything.

Beyond that, a clip on lapel microphone is the sensible first purchase for anybody appearing on camera regularly. They are inexpensive, they attach to a phone or a computer, and proximity does most of the work that expensive equipment is credited with. A larger microphone on a stand is better still and only worth it if you record frequently.

Fix the room before upgrading the equipment, because acoustics affect the result more than the device. A room with soft furnishings, curtains, and carpet sounds considerably better than a hard walled office, and recording in a smaller space with things in it beats a large empty one. Turning off air conditioning and closing a window removes noise you have stopped hearing.

Test by listening back rather than by watching the levels, since the meter tells you the volume and not the quality. Record two minutes, play it through headphones, and listen for echo, background hum, and whether your voice sounds close or distant. That single check identifies most problems and costs the length of the recording.

Record the audio separately if you are producing anything substantial, which is what makes a noticeable difference in polished work. A phone recording sound close to you while a camera records picture from further away produces better results than either alone, at the cost of aligning them afterward.

Watch the practical failures rather than pursuing quality generally. Wireless microphones running out of charge partway, a lapel microphone rubbing against clothing, and a device switching to a different input without anybody noticing are what actually ruin recordings, and each is prevented by a check before starting.

Then remember that captions solve part of the problem regardless. A large share of video is watched without sound, which means poor audio costs you less than it would have five years ago provided the captions are accurate. That is a reason to caption everything rather than a reason to accept bad sound.

Keep the setup permanent rather than assembling it each time, since anything requiring five minutes of arrangement is something you will avoid doing. A microphone left connected and positioned is the difference between recording when the idea arrives and deferring it indefinitely.

Check the input before every recording, since devices switch to a different source without warning when something is connected or disconnected and the failure is only discovered afterward.

Record a few seconds of the room before speaking, which gives you a sample of the background noise and makes it removable in editing if it turns out to be a problem.

Wear headphones while recording anything with another person, since the alternative is their voice coming through your speakers and back into your microphone, which produces an echo nobody can remove afterward.