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- Look, I found a bunch of fuzzy animal friends in the park.
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What is up people, Dunna here.
And today, we're gonna be taking a look
at what I like to call
mini mics.
And all of the options that we're gonna be looking at today
are under $100, so they won't break the bank either.
If you're someone who's just starting out with YouTube,
vlogging, TikTok, whatever it happens to be,
you're gonna wanna stick around and check these out.
Now, while there are a lot of options in this category,
I have five to show you today.
Some of them have been around for a little bit
and some of them are newer.
We've got the classic
Rode VideoMicro, which is a favorite
for a lot of people.
We've got the brand new Deity D4 Mini.
From Sennheiser, we've got the MKE 200.
Also from Deity, we've got the D4 Duo.
And finally, from a company
I've never talked about
on my channel before, from Movo,
we've got the double mic.
So, here's what we're gonna do in this video.
First of all, we're gonna talk about this type of mic
and why you might wanna use it.
Then I'm gonna go over the functions
and features of each of these microphones,
because they're all just a little bit different.
Of course, we'll get to some audio quality comparison
so you can hear how these microphones perform.
And closer to the end,
I'll give you my recommendation on what I think
might be a great choice for you
if you're looking for a mic like this.
And at any point, if you want more information,
there will be links to all these mics
down in the description.
And I mean, if you're heading down there anyway,
you might as well just like, you know,
tap that little like button.
(jazz upbeat music)
Okay, so first things first,
let's talk about mini mics as a whole,
some of the reasons you might want to get them,
and some of the drawbacks of using a microphone like this.
Of course, as the name that I've assigned them
suggests they are small.
If you're someone who does a lot of traveling or hiking,
or anything where you need to consider
the size and weight of the equipment
that you're bringing with you,
then a mic like this might be an option.
Another big factor, especially for people
who are just getting started out
and starting to buy gear is the price.
Like I mentioned before,
all of these microphones are under $100.
So, if you're looking at these options,
you're not necessarily gonna have to break the bank
to get decent quality audio.
And the third factor that I think really sets
these microphones apart from the other microphones
that you might be looking at for on-camera use,
is the fact that they have no battery.
No rechargeable battery, no AAA, no AA, no nothing.
They're just powered based off of whatever your camera
or phone can supply to them.
But it's not all rainbows and lollipops here,
there is one major drawback
that I've noticed from using smaller microphones like this,
and that is they can never quite get them to sound
as good as the larger microphones.
And part of that goes back to the battery thing,
because if you put power into a microphone,
you can put more electronics into it and they can do more
with the quality that way.
But I think also just the size is a factor
in what they can do as far as kind of tweaking
the little things about the audio quality coming out.
That being said for most of the purposes
that you would be using one of these microphones for,
they do sound pretty darn good.
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All right, let's talk about some of the features
and differences between all of these microphones.
Starting off with the Rode VideoMicro.
It's $60, there's a $70 version
that comes with an extra cable that works with mobile,
it's got its own little Rycote shock mount,
it comes with the windscreen, and that's pretty much it.
I've had this one for a couple of years now
and it served me great when I needed it.
Couple of little notes, the Rycote shock mount
does start to sag a little bit,
but if you take the cable and you plug it in
to these little kind of crevices in the shock mount itself,
then it will stay upright a little bit better.
So, if you have this microphone
and you're struggling with that,
there's already kind of a fixed built into it.
The other thing is that the windscreen
is a little bit tough to work with.
If you just kind of slip it on, it's not actually on,
you have to like pull it until it's over
a bit of a groove there, and now it's on tight.
And then the only other thing
is that the cable comes out the back.
So, if you have it on top of your camera
and you wanna put your eye up to the viewfinder,
that might hit you in the head.
Next on the list,
we've got the brand new Deity V-Mic D4 Mini.
It comes in at $50 and it already comes
with the regular cable as well as the mobile cable.
It is very, very similar to the VideoMicro,
but it is a little bit smaller.
The windscreen is slightly smaller that comes with it.
And it's got an extra input on here
so you could actually input,
let's say a lav mic or another microphone,
which makes this a little bit more interesting.
What it does is, it splits the left and right channel
so that you can have two inputs.
So, let's say you wanted to talk from behind the camera,
you could actually attach another microphone to this
or like I said, a lav mic.
And then you don't have to worry about
not being able to be heard while you're showing something
on camera and talking about it.
I also noticed that getting the windscreen on and off
is a little bit more secure feeling than it is on the Rode.
Next on the list, we've got the Sennheiser MKE 200.
And if you've been watching my channel,
you'll know that I talked about its bigger sibling,
the MKE 400 recently.
But this is a much simpler microphone,
but it's also one of the smallest
and it's got some pretty cool stuff going on.
For example, inside here,
you've got your shock mount built in
as well as some wind protection.
Then it also comes with extra wind protection too.
The cable goes in underneath the front of the microphone
where it's not taking up any extra space
and it actually screws in too,
so that you're not worried about it
accidentally pulling out.
Something to keep in mind is that
the windscreen is really annoying to get on and off.
I just mostly leave it on,
because it doesn't take up a whole lot of extra room,
like some of the other windscreens do.
And this microphone also comes with a carrying pouch
as well as an extra cable for mobile.
Going back into the world of Deity,
we've got the V-Mic D4 Duo.
And this microphone is really interesting
because it's actually two microphones.
One on the front and one on the back.
This microphone comes in at $90,
it does come with the windscreen as well.
It's also got an extra input on the side
that overrides the back microphone.
So again, you can do that thing where you plug in a lav mic
or an extra microphone if you want.
On the top of the microphone,
there's a switch to allow you to choose
just the front microphone or the front and back microphone.
And the way that that works is, if you choose
just the front microphone,
it will go into the left and right channels,
making it feel like it's coming up the middle.
And then if you choose the front and back microphones,
it's gonna split those into the left and right channels.
And then in your post-processing software,
you can split them apart and do whatever you want with them.
I have a whole video about this.
If you wanna check it out up here,
it's got a Rycote shock mount and it comes with windscreens,
which are not my favorite windscreens.
They're a little bit difficult to get on,
similar to the way that the Rode VideoMicro is.
And I have noticed myself having some problem
with wind with these,
but we'll test that out a little bit later as well.
And finally, the last one on our list
is the Movo DoubleMic.
This one was really interesting to me.
I've never actually used a Movo microphone before,
but I use Movo windscreens on my Deity and Rode microphones.
This microphone comes in at $60.
And when I first got it, I thought,
okay, this is going to be very similar to the Deity D4 Duo
but there are some differences.
First and foremost, as you can see,
it does come with windscreens.
It also comes with little like foamy windscreens
that you can put on it, but I try not to use those if I can.
I find that these ones work better.
Also, little thumb hat.
Like the Deity D4 Duo, this has a front and rear microphone.
The cable is permanently attached, which is interesting.
I'm still trying to figure out whether I like that or not.
I don't often disconnect the cables,
but I think I like having the option.
But one thing that's really interesting,
it only ships obviously with the one cable,
but there's a switch on top of the microphone
that allows you to switch it between
mobile mode or DSLR camera mode.
So, without having to have an extra cable lying around,
which I honestly just like lose those mobile cables
most of the time, you could switch between the two modes
without having to switch the cable.
There is also a headphone output,
which is kind of nice, because if you have a camera
that doesn't have a headphone output,
you can actually monitor your audio
before it gets to the camera.
And on the top of the microphone,
we've got a three-way switch.
So, you can change it between just the front microphone,
just the rear microphone, or both.
Now, the big difference between
this one and the Deity D4 Duo,
when you do switch it to front and rear,
it's not splitting between the two channels.
It's not going between left and right.
It's summing both the front and rear microphone
onto both channels, which I think is a big mistake.
Now, we'll hear the audio samples later
and I'll try and describe why I think it's a mistake.
But the biggest thing is the fact
that you don't have control over each microphone separately.
When you sum them together like that,
you're always dealing with both.
The Movo DoubleMic also comes
with this little hard carrying case, which is kind of cool,
but it doesn't actually fit the microphone
if the microphone is all built up.
The other thing that I'm interested in
is to see how these windscreens perform,
because they're a lot smaller than any of the other ones
on the other microphones.
And it seems like the wind is going to oblige
for my tests today.
All right, let's do some audio quality tests.
I'm gonna do them all like this
in the hot shoe of the camera.
Kind of in a vlogging situation about an arm's length away.
I think that's just the most practical way
to test all of these microphones,
since that's the way that you're going to be using them.
Because some of the microphones have different features,
I'll be testing them slightly differently.
And something that I've never really done before
is I'm going to show you unprocessed and processed versions
of the different microphones.
And I'm gonna do that by running it through
the new ERA 6 bundle from accusonus.
They've added a lot of things to the newest version of it,
with like an audio clean-up assistant, a deep breather.
But what we're gonna be doing today
is I'm just gonna be throwing an automatic EQ on it.
So, it's gonna automatically analyze the audio
and then EQ it, so you can hear what it might sound like
after you process it.
If you wanna check out the ERA 6 bundle,
there's a link in the description for you.
All right, let's get to the test.
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really wanna zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really wanna zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really wanna zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really want a zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really wanna zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really wanna zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really wanna zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really wanna zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
♪ I really, really, really wanna zigazag ah ♪
♪ Tell me what you want, what you really, really want ♪
Now, that we've heard the tests
and we know what they sound like,
I'm gonna let you know kind of what my conclusions
are as well as my other findings
in just kind of using these microphones
and give you what I think is my recommendation
if you're looking for a mini mic.
First off, in audio quality,
I thought the Rode VideoMicro and the Deity D4 Mini
sounded pretty darn close.
The Rode VideoMicro was a little bit brighter,
but they both did a great job.
I did notice that the Rode let in a little bit
less sound from the back of the microphone
than the Deity did,
but that's gonna come back in a second here.
The D4 duo sounded great on both microphones.
It was a little bit brighter than the D4 mini again.
And even when I was just using the front microphone,
I noticed that I was getting a little bit more
of the sound coming from around the mic as well.
So, it's maybe a little bit less directional
than the d4 mini.
And I did notice that the windscreens on the D4 duo
didn't quite stand up as well as the bigger one
that you see on things like the D4 mini.
The Sennheiser sounded pretty thin.
And unfortunately, it was probably my least favorite
in the audio quality department.
And the Movo DoubleMic was unfortunately
kind of full of problems.
The volume of the two microphones was way different.
So, you'd have to constantly be changing
what your volume was on the back of your camera.
And then of course,
when you put it into that front and rear mode,
it's sums them together.
And depending on your situation,
you're gonna get all sorts of different phasing problems.
What that means is that if you're speaking
into the front of the mic,
your voice might be bouncing off the wall behind it
and hitting that back microphone
and they kind of end up canceling each other out.
So, depending on the situation that you're in,
your sound is constantly changing.
I did try the double mic in a couple of different situations
in that front and rear mode,
and it was just a real problem to work with.
So, which one do I recommend?
Well, I think we can get rid of the Movo DoubleMic
and the Sennheiser based on the fact
that the Movo has got a bunch of problems,
the Sennheiser, I just really didn't think
sounded that good, like it's bigger sibling, the 400.
The d4 duo does pretty good,
especially if you're someone who talks
into the back of the camera a lot.
You just wanna be careful of wind
when you're using the D4 duo, as well as, like I said,
it kind of seemed to capture a little bit
more of the sound around the microphone as well.
So, then we were down to two and my top choice of the budge
is the Deity D4 Mini.
At $50 with that extra input if you want it.
It sounds great.
It's a little bit smaller than the Rode VideoMicro.
And earlier I said that the Rode VideoMicro
blocked out better from the back of the microphone,
I actually found that to be a bit of an advantage
for the Deity D4 Mini,
because you could talk into the back of the microphone
if you were in a pinch and it would still work
if something really quickly happened
and you needed to be talking into the back of the camera
while you were showing what was going on in front of you,
it did actually work and it sounded pretty decent.
It is still ideal, of course,
to plug something into that extra input
or turn the microphone around if you can.
But I did find it directional enough
while still allowing you to talk
into the back of the microphone if you were in a pinch.
I know that's kind of a weird thing to say,
but it worked out really well for me in a practical sense.
So, those are my thoughts, but as always,
I wanna hear what you think,
so make sure to leave a comment down below.
There are links to all the mics down in the description
if you wanna check them out more.
And on your way down there, make sure to hit that like,
and subscribe button.
Hit the bell notification,
so you don't miss out on future reviews and tutorials.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
Definitely.
What do I wanna say at the end?
Figure out what you wanna say and then say it.
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