Are you tired with the default recent comments widget in WordPress? Because it can only shows the activity without comments itself. Hereby, I have been seeking for WP recent comments widget for some period of time.  Let's come straight to the point see what goods I have founded.  

1. Better WordPress Recent Comments

Version: 1.2.2 By Khang Minh Display full comment content on the widget, display avatar, create template for different type of comment authors, "Old-New" comment navigation links and so on.

General options contains some well-known options such as enable avatar on widget and so on.

Rather than the general options, this plugin also offers user to modify the template. Within this feature, user can specify the appearance for different group of comment author.

The final effect that taken by this plugin on my site (Mention that icon for administrator is added by myself in this plugin via "template options" setting page):

 

2. WP-RecentComments

Version: 2.2.7 By mg12 WP-RecentComments is another old plugin which has not updated for over 3 years, but it is still valuable. Similar to "Better WordPress Recent Comments", you can load old comments without refresh the whole webpage since it is using Ajax technique.

The option panel looks very easy to use, thus, it does not allow user to customize template.

Result:

 

3. Polygon recent comments with avatar

Version: 2.2.7 By CafeFreelancer.com The last plugin I'm going to introduce is "Polygon recent comments with avatar". The reason that make this plugin stands out from tons of them is the simplicity.

This plugin even does not have an individual settings panel, everything you can do with it is go to widgets page to set it up, settings are like:

Result:

  This is it. Choose a suitable plugin based on your demand. If you have great plugin want to share, leave a comment below. Cherer :)