Welcome back to a new episode.
Having stationary mics are fine when you’re recording at a desk or with an instrument.
But what about if you want the option to move about while having great audio quality?
Today I’ll be looking at the Neewer 57-Channel Wireless Lavalier Microphone system.
In the box -- are the transmitter and receiver
-- the lapel microphone -- audio cables
-- charging cables I’ll be demoing the mic in different environments,
so stick around to see the performance Lets look at the physical features
The receiver has a port to connect the cable to the recording device as well a port to
plug your headphones into.
There are 2 antennas which can be extended as Ill show later.
Both transmitter and receiver have a batter life of 5hrs which I found to be true
The system supports DC-5V USB charging and it can be charged by USB charger, power bank,
notebooks, computers, and so on I found that charging the system via mac mini
ports to full battery took about an hour to do.
The transmitter (or better known as the microphone)
and receiver are lightweight devices with
a soft matte black finish On the top of it the transmitter, you can
see the mic mesh as well as the port to connect the lapel microphone too.
The mic has 1 antenna Like the receiver, the power, volume and channel
selection buttons are found on both side of the device
To turn it on, just hold
the power button for 3 seconds.
Read the instruction manual, if you’re unclear on somethings.
I’ll be pointing out the features that I found important throughout this review
There are 2 types of cables: One to connect to your smartphone
One to connect to your dslr The instruction manual tells
you the difference between the 2 by the number of lines on the metal jack end.
To avoid confusion, I added green painters tape to the dslr cable since I found myself
constantly choosing the wrong cable when testing this wireless system
The neewer wireless system has three range modes, which I’ll demo later
The first being 30 meters. As long as you’re within a 30m range,
the antennas on either transmitter or receiver do not need to be extended.
To extend the range to 50m, you need to extend the two antennas from receiver
If you want to extend the range to 80m, keep the antennas from the receiver extended
AND extend the antenna from the transmitter
This wireless system will work on smartphones,
but if you’re using an iphone, you’ll need to lightning port adapter
One of the flaws with such an affordable product are the materials its made from
The plastic screen of the wireless system gets scratched really easily
A really cheap experiment I tried was using clear tape on the screen, but it looked ugly as sin.
Perhaps using a dslr screen protector could work if think the scratches will bother you.
The alligator clip for the lapel mic has a strong and responsive spring inside of it
which is important to prevent the mic from moving around.
I saw this question on Amazon on whether the neewer wireless mic can work on computers.
I tried different cables to see if it’d work on my macbook but it didnt
A bit a research suggests that getting a type of audio splitter could work
but I didnt have one or time to do this Let me know in the comments if you’d be
interested in seeing a tutorial on how to connect a wireless mic system to a macbook!
Lets say you want to mute the mic, How would you go about doing this?
First, you can see that the green lights on both transmitter and receiver are on,
meaning they’re connected to each other
On the transmitter, tap the power and minus button at the same time.
The green lights from the entire system will go out, signalling that the mic is muted.
As this clip shows, the system is still on but no audio is being picked up
On the other hand, muting and unmutting the entire system via the receiver isnt possible.
Here I turn the entire system on again, mute the receiver but the transmitter doesnt get muted.
Now its the time you’ve all been waiting for, demo time!
If you’re using just the transmitter and want to avoid the wind being picked up,
you can purchase this camera stick on windmuff.
Now im pulling out the antennas to test the range of the transmitter quality right in front of City Hall
To avoid additional wind pick up, I have an
adjustable windmuff that will go on the lapel mic. The set up is easy. Take off the foam mic
and place the windmuff on the mic slowly. Pull the contraction rope until its secure on the barrel of
lapel mic.
At 80m there is no reception. I’ve ran this DSLR audio test three times already in this
wide open space and the audio always fails past 50m. You can hear the clicking as I talk.
The same happened when I tried filming in front of City Hall as well,
but I thought it was due to all the telecom tech around me and
possible government security technology monitoring and securing the property.
While I doubt people would be filming so far away from the receiver, the advertising from
the manufacturer saying that its possible to record audio this far is quite misleading.
The neewer wireless lavalier is a nice audio system to have if you’re
work involves you moving around or not. The audio quality is really solid on both
smartphone and DSLR but especially the smartphone at an 80m distance
I think the manufacturer can use better material for the systems
screens so it doesnt scratch so easily. Also, I found that the audio quality drops
around 50meters but this is not a concern for 99% of people interested in purchasing it.
If you found this review helpful, give it a like and subscribe and Ill see you in the next video