SabineTek SmartMike+ Wireless Lavalier Microphone, Rechargeable Bluetooth Clip-on Lapel Mic Noise Cancellation for iPhone Android iPad Video Recording Interview Teaching Podcast Vlogging (Black)

The media could not be loaded. I have been a video blogger for many years. I primarily do product reviews for Amazon but I also do professional Press reviews for my website.Only recently have I begun shooting my videos on the iPhone. Now that it supports 4k, the iPhone is capable of producing beautiful videos in such a compact size.In order to also downsize my audio needs, I looked for a very compact wireless microphone that would easily pair with my iPhone when in use and then just as easily get thrown in my suitcase when traveling.This wireless microphone from Sabinetek has turned out to be a remarkable find. It works beautifully with the iPhone, is extremely small, but yet provides some of the best audio I have heard from a wireless microphone device. In fact, the quality of sound matches or exceeds that in more expensive and larger wireless transmitters/receivers I have been using over the years.Using the microphone out of the box is effortless. You basically pair it with your iPhone by long-pressing the power button on the mic and then allowing your iPhone to find the device and automatically pair it.What happens next isn't exactly described in the manual. As a matter of fact, I couldn't understand why at first I couldn't record directly to my iPhone using the video app. What the manual strangely does not tell you is that you have to go to the app store (or Google Play on Android) and download a free app called SMIKE+. Once you download and open the app you discover that all your recording is done here. The app is pretty good for the fact that it automatically displays audio levels, lets you switch between different video aspect ratios, and then lets you do some post-editing video and audio mixing. All the tools in the app are pretty basic, but you can have a lot of fun tweaking your video.One of the coolest things this app does is auto-generate the closed-captioned text of your video. Simply opt to turn it on once your video is complete and get a complete text transcript of the video. In my results, it worked pretty well, though it made a few mistakes along the way. It's not a perfect video to text translationAs I mentioned, the audio quality is spectacular -- especially when comparing it to more expensive and elaborate wireless systems. There are tools embedded in the recording app that does a great job of filtering out background noise and really making the audio sound perfect.There are some little annoyances using the app, however. Once you pair the mic with Bluetooth you have to unpair it before you can hear the recorded audio in your recording. Don't know why the app audio is conflicting with the phone's audio. I also had a lot of dropouts when I put the iPhone too close to the lighting I was using in the room. Seems that the Bluetooth signal somehow gets distorted when too close to the lighting rig.The SabineTek microphone comes with a micro-USB charging cable. It took only an hour to charge and I used it for hours afterward without needing a re-charge. You will need to provide your own 5W or higher charging brick. That being said, there are some neat accessories that include a microphone cap, windbreaker, earphone (to monitor the recording) and a storage pouch.One microphone will provide mono audio however it can easily be paired with a second mic for stereo.I am very pleased with this microphone. It produces a level of audio that exceeded my expectations. I think the free app does a lot of secret tweaking to really make the audio sound as perfect as it can.I highly recommend this wireless microphone!

I'm making a series of short videos of exercises to post online. Being able to play the accompanying music on my iPhone at the same time as recording the video is a huge plus. This can be done alone using the SMike+ app (which can be downloaded for free). But just using the app, you have to turn on the music from your phone, then start the video from your phone, then get in front of the phone, then use the phone mic at a distance. None of this is ideal or even practical. The SmartMike allows you to have your music and the video both primed, then you get yourself in position and turn on the video with a single click of the button on the mic and then turn on the music with a double-click of the same button. I find this very useful. What I'm doing is giving an introduction to the exercise, then turning on the music and demonstrating the exercise to the music. If I stand still while bringing my hand up to the mic when turning on the music, I can later edit these few seconds out of the video entirely. This allows me to go seamlessly from the intro to the music and demo.As for the sound quality, it's excellent. You just do a little testing to find the right volume of the music to balance with the voice-over, and you're good to go.The drawbacks: the documentation is terrible. The instructions only cover, in the tiniest print, how to turn the SmartMike+ on and off and how to pair it with your Bluetooth, as well as how to create a master/slave setup using two SmartMike+s. The instructions don't even tell you that you need to download and use the SMike+ app. Had I not read about this on Amazon, I would have no idea.A feature I would love to see would be the ability to pair the mic with two phones simultaneously. This would allow shooting the video from two angles and starting the recording on both phones at the same time with one click.

We offer live interactive group yoga classes online and needed a wireless lapel mic that worked for our application which is being used by teachers as verbally cue students and demo the poses. So we bought a few products to test (from professional lapel mics to blue tooth headsets ranging anywhere from $113 to $350) and we ended up choosing this product and ordered more of them.Our two main reasons for picking this product:1) The sound quality is very good; very clear and natural. It does not drop when we walk outside the room (not that that was a criteria for us).2) We use this mic with Zoom meeting and on Zoom apps for iPhone and iPad there is no way to set separate sources for microphone and speaker. So as soon as an external audio device is plugged in, Zoom sets the source for both audio in & audio out to that device. Most external microphones we tried don't have the ear monitor, they are just microphone so the teacher is heard but they can't hear the students. This product does come with an ear monitor which was great as it solved this big issue for us.This product's feel and form is also very good.1) It looks very well made (there was another product that was as small however it did not look well made and its form factor was awkward to be used as a lapel mic)2) Is very light and at the same time very sturdy and not flimsySometimes we do find that they don't connect quickly but we are not sure if that is due to the device or the mic. They connect to iPhones much faster than iPads. We did try to connect to one of our Mac Desktops but it was never discovered as a Bluetooth device; granted this machine runs an old version of Mac OS.We have not had it for a long time so won't be able to comment on its long term reliability and durability.We also have not used it to teach any outdoor classes so we don't know how it would perform in a noisy windy environment.So for our use this is a great product.