We describe here experiments evaluating the performance of solenoidal radio frequency probes having submillimeter dimensions (microcoils) as detectors for liquid nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in very low-homogeneity (100 ppm/cm) magnetic fields. Performance is based on the measured H2O linewidth. A series of solenoidal microcoils having sample volumes 8, 53, and 593 nl were filled with distilled H2O and evaluated for smallest obtainable unshimmed NMR spectral linewidths in a vertical bore superconducting magnet, stabilized at 5.9 T (1H frequency=250 MHz). The smallest microcoil (472 μm diameter) gave a smallest H2O linewidth of 525 Hz, 25 times smaller than that from a standard 5.7 mm probe. Linewidth increased approximately as the square root of sample volume. For comparison, shimmed H2O linewidths using the same microcoils in a high-homogeneity (0.1 ppm/cm) NMR magnet were also measured. Shimmed linewidths in the high-homogeneity magnet were two orders of magnitude smaller and exhibited a similar dependence on volume. The results demonstrate that by using microcoils the volume over which the polarizing magnetic field must meet a specified homogeneity can be significantly reduced, which would be advantageous for smaller, less expensive NMR systems.