A streaming setup checklist, in the order that matters

1. Audio

People will watch a blurry stream with clear sound for hours. They close a sharp one with bad sound in a minute. The built-in laptop mic picks up the room, the fan and the keyboard; a USB microphone on a stand, close to your mouth, fixes most of it. A dynamic mic rejects room noise better than a condenser in an untreated room, which is why the Shure MV7 and its kind are so common on desks. If the room echoes, a rug and a sofa do more than foam panels.

2. Lighting

The single cheapest improvement to any camera. Light from in front, slightly above eye level, and nothing bright behind you. A desk lamp bounced off the wall is a start; a soft panel light is the first thing worth buying. A setup with Lighting scoring 29 out of 100 isn’t going to be rescued by anything in the Video column.

3. Video

Only now. A decent webcam at eye level, an arm’s length away, in good light, looks professional. A mirrorless camera through a capture device looks better still, with the blurred background people associate with real production. But it’s a step up from good, not a fix for bad.

4. Room and position

Where you sit relative to the camera, what’s behind you, how far the wall is. Depth behind you looks natural; a cluttered shelf against your head doesn’t. Free to fix, so fix it.

5. Workflow

The kit that makes going live reliable: a stream deck or macro pad so scene changes are one press, an audio interface if you’ve gone to an XLR mic, a second screen for chat, cables that are long enough and labelled. This is where a setup goes from working to working every time. It is also where a lot of money gets spent too early: a Stream Deck is lovely and does nothing for a stream that sounds bad.

What a weak link does

These five don’t add up; they multiply. Excellent audio and video through a dim room still reads as amateur. That’s why Gearit scores the whole setup from Critical to Elite and names the part that’s pulling it down. A board of five items worth £418 scoring 40 is a normal starting point, and the plan from there, four things in three steps, cheapest wins first, took that example from 44 to 95 for £335.

Before you buy the next thing

Gearit checks a product against what you already own before you buy it, so you can see whether a £600 RØDECaster is a whole studio in a box for you or an expensive way to add two mic sockets. When you do buy, it gives plug-by-plug instructions for your gear: lay every cable out, plug one in per step, switch on at the end. The unlock for the plan and the check is £24.99 once, not a subscription; a lot of the app is free.