Best Wireless Mic for Content Creators and Filmmakers: Rode Wireless Pro Review
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Best Wireless Mic for Content Creators and Filmmakers: Rode Wireless Pro Review - In this video Alli gives an honest review of the Rode Wireless Pro Mic. She covers what you get when you buy it, it's best features like 32 Bit Float, battery life, internal storage, and who it's best suited for.
RODE WIRELESS PRO MIC https://amzn.to/3ApNcOO
As someone who has no volume control and randomly starts yelling for no reason and then talks really quietly? This laugh system has saved my butt with 32-bit float technology, which I'm going to talk a bit more about soon.
We love this mic system so much that we just bought a second one for our bigger shoots, so I figured it was about time I make a review video on it so that you can decide if the Wireless Pro is right for you. This video is not sponsored. Will and I like to really test out any gear that we're even considering recommending to make sure it works well in lots of different shooting situations. If you want to pick up one for yourself, it's linked in the description below.
In this video, I'm going to show you what you get when you buy it, I'm going to share the most awesome and best features, and a few things I don't love. Now let's check out the Rode Wireless Pro.
This is really cool. You get a smart charge hard shell case, which not only protects your transmitters and receiver but charges them. When it's fully charged, you'll get two complete charges on your transmitters and receiver. Fully charged, you get a battery life of up to 7 hours, which is awesome. I love that you don't have to individually charge and have lots and lots of cables all around; everything's just neatly organized and in the case, ready to go.
One small thing I feel like the Rode team overlooked was getting the transmitters and receiver out of the case. It's really, really easy, especially when you're not used to it, to accidentally push a button. I feel like they could have designed it a little bit better, but it's not a huge deal.
Another thing I really like that I didn't expect to is you can set things up so that as soon as you pull the transmitter and receiver out of the case, it starts auto-recording. I actually prefer it, especially when you're on a very busy run-and-gun shoot where you're wearing multiple hats; it's nice to just not have to think about pressing record.
Back to the case for a second: I also really like that when you put the transmitters and receiver in the case, you can just plug it directly into your computer to charge. The second hard shell case you get has all of the accessories that you need in it: a USB-C to USB-C cable to charge, a Lightning Apple cable to USB-C so that you can record right into your iPhone or right into your computer.
You get two transmitters and one receiver, so you can record two people at once. You also have microphones built right into the transmitters. If you're on a more casual shoot, you can just clip the transmitters right on to the person speaking, or if you're on a more professional shoot, you can also use the two lavalier microphones that you get when you buy this. The receiver has a headphone port, which is awesome. You can also plug this right into your camera or phone.
You can use these magnets to clip your transmitter wherever you want on yourself. You get two lav microphones, the 3.5 mm cable to plug right into your camera, some dead cats for windy situations, and caps for your lav mic. Be warned: these kind of fall off a little bit easily, so keep your eyes out for them at the end of your shoot.
Setting up the Rode Wireless Pro is super easy. Even if you're technologically challenged, you can pretty much just take these out of the case and start recording. But if you are more of a pro and you do want to customize things, you have the option to, either with the Rode app that you can download on your phone. The thing I don't like about that is, as of now, it doesn't provide you with all the settings that you can adjust, so what's the point of downloading it? Just use the app that you download to your computer; that gives you all the setting customization you need.
You can also set up things so that you have a safety backup track set lower than your original track. Even though this next one is amazing, I didn't expect to use it, but I am using it. I come from a background where, when I'm recording with a lav, I have it recorded to an external audio recorder. This Wireless Pro gives you the option to onboard record directly to the transmitter. It has 32 GB of internal memory, which is a lot for audio recording and can store up to 40 hours of 32-bit float audio. Once the memory fills all up, it will auto-record over the oldest recording, so that's pretty nice.
Back to the computer app for a second: the computer app is what you would use to update any firmware and to get those audio recordings. All you have to do is plug the case into the computer, and you can either just drag the audio files off of the transmitters wherever you'd like, or if you want to decide the format you'd like to download—I prefer and recommend 32-bit float—then you can do so in the app by collecting your audio files and exporting them wherever you'd like to.
Okay, 32-bit float. This is my favorite feature. I think it's such a valuable feature that any future lav system or audio recording device is likely going to be incorporating it. It ensures that your audio is not going to get clipped, so if you do have a lunatic like me that you're recording who talks really loud and then really quietly, you're not going to get distortion or loss of quality in your audio. To utilize the 32-bit float, you do have to use the audio recordings that go into the transmitters. If you're using an external audio recorder or if you're recording the audio into your camera, those likely don't have the same capabilities, just so you know.
Another awesome and peace-of-mind feature is the range that these have. You can go up to 260 m away from the receiver and still record clean, crisp audio. For the type of shoots we do, there's no reason why we'd need that amount of range, but when I was starting out in video, there were situations when I would shoot weddings where we'd put the transmitters on the bride and groom and we'd want to give them some privacy, so we'd stand way back—not 260 m back, but again, for the peace of mind of knowing that you can have some distance, it is pretty nice.
Let's talk about sound quality. We've used many Rode products over the years, and the sound quality is the other main reason we decided to get these over the DJI Mic 2s. We got to test those out; they are the only other, as far as I know, lav system that has 32-bit float, but the sound quality wasn't as good as Rode’s. The sound quality of the Rode Wireless Pro is rich and full, and I don't know about you, but I care about good audio, so for me, sticking with Rode was a no-brainer.
The price of this entire system is $399, compared to the Wireless Go IIs, which are going for $299. It comes with two lavalier mics—the previous version didn't—it comes with 32-bit float technology, more advanced technology overall, and it's only $100 more, so yeah, I think the price is very reasonable.
We've been super happy with this lav system, and I recommended it to a few filmmaker friends who have been very happy with it as well. So if you want to pick up one for yourself, you can check out the link below. If you have any questions or thoughts, shoot them down in the comments.
If you're new here, I'm Alli, and Will and I own a video production company in Toronto, Canada. We do a lot of commercial shoots, corporate videos, and we create weekly YouTube videos all about gear reviews as well as DaVinci Resolve editing tutorials. If you're into that sort of thing, subscribe to stay in the loop.
I hope you have a lovely day, and I hope that this video was helpful to you. We'll see you in another one.
RODE WIRELESS PRO MIC https://amzn.to/3ApNcOO
SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE (250+ FREE FILMMAKING TUTORIALS):
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➜FOR FILMING: https://amzn.to/3EB8DuZ
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➜ https://bit.ly/2NPCjd7
👉GET 50% OFF OUR EDITING PRODUCTS:
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