Saramonic Blink500 B3 Wireless Lavalier Microphone System with Built-in Microphone Transmitter MFi Certified Apple Lightning Connector Receiver for iPhone iPad

It's almost perfect

Hey Everyone and welcome back, so today we are finally revieing this microphone that I have been talking for a while now. I think I have used them enough to make a complete review on this and give my opinions about them. So, we are going to see what comes inside the box and then we’ll do a range test as well as different sound test with different combinations of camera.So, starting from the beginning if you haven’t watched it my unboxing video of this, inside the box it comes with the receiver and transmitter, two usb-c to usb type b cables, one cable to connect your receiver to your device, and one more TRRS to TRS cable to connect microphone with your receiver and finally a lav microphone that pairs really well with the transmitter.DIFFERENT MODELSAslo they have six different versions of this model Blink 500, so this is B1, but they also have different versions, so there is a version with two transmitter and one receiver and one version with trasmitter that goes straight into the phone, and then combinations of all those. This is B1, basic version which costa $179.So, lets starts with different tests and as I said in the beginning, this whole video is being recorded with just using Blink 500 and it’s lav or may be straight from the transmitter, so hopeflly you can get the idea of the sound quality throughout the video. Talk about alternative As well.CONTROLSSo starting with different controls on both receiver as well as transmitter, first of all, on the receiver there is only one key and that is to turn itself on and off. And then we have a tiny light on top of receiver to show two things, one is battery level and second it’s connection to the transmitter. Straight out of the box this both pairs up without doing anything, you can just turn them on and they are connected but if you see on the side there is a small whole and it also comes with something like sim ejector from your phone that you can use to connect it to the new transmitters.As far as on the transmitter, first thing we have on the top is microphone to, and then we have a on and off button and on the side we have a gain button control for the transmitted sound.We also have a light inside this on/off which shows your 3 different gains and there is one small light in the end that shows connection to your receiver. It also has a red light to show low battery inside the transmitter and it turns to green when it is charging.Both has UBS-C charging and lasts for about 4 hours before staring to show low battery signal. It takes about 3-4 hours to charge them with the regular USB type B charger and you can continue using them while charging which is a good thing.Range TestFirst let’s start with the Range test for this microphone and Saramonic Claims to have about 98feet of range with different interference in between like different wifi networks and 150 feet of range in an open space without any interference in between. Now that’s theoratical and in testing I am getting about 30 feet of range to the max with this microphone. Also, the range is also affected by whether the transmitter and receiver is in direct line of sight of each other and this is a very common issue with wireless microphones but with Blink 500 it is pretty severe. Even putting this thing inside the pocket or any kind of small interference can affect your sound and it will start breaking because of that.Let’s see couple of tests...Describe tests….Using it with PhoneAs I mentioned earlier you can also use this with your iphone or android phone and it does come with TRRS to TRS cable, so you need to buy anything extra to use this with your phone as well. You will need a dongle to connect this cable and once you are connected you are good to go.The voice quality even with using with iphone is really good and you know especially it will definately give you a far better quality sound compare to what you get from the phone mic.Talk about voice qualityAnd lastly as far as the sound quality from the microphone, it’s a decent microphone in my opinion. The sound is not fuller from the microphone from the transmitter and you can it is missing lots of frequancy of the sound but you won’t realize that unless you compare it with a good quality lav mic or may be a shotgun microphone. But it is more targetted for casual uses, something like vlog or for quick recording it should work fine. One of the downside is that since it a very smooth surface there is no way you can put any kind of deadcat or windshield on the top so if you are in the wind with outside you probably should have to avoid using this and use lav microphone instead.And talking about the lav microphone, it is also of good quality as this pricepoint and surprisingly they also include this inside the box. One of the downside with the design of this lav is that this clip don’t come out which is strange, I mean if you want to hind the lav microphone than unfortunately you can’t do that with this clip below your tshirt. It also comes with a nice windshield and again it’s a decent quality but you won’t realize it until you compare it with a higher quality microphone.[Again, your final sound quality also depend on the quality of the pairing device that you are using with, if you are using it with a sony camera, they do have really good pre-amp, and gives you a nice clean sound becuase of the least pre-amp used from the camera, which gives you very less base noise. On the other side, with Canon, you have to go about quarter on mic level which does introduce some noise but it’s still pretty decent once you apply the noise reduction.With camera like blackmagic which doesn’t have a good pre-amp, you will be using a good amount of gain from camera which does intorduce noise and that’s at maximum amplification of the transmitter itselt.And talking about the transmitter, there is one more downside I see with the whole system. The gain buttons are on the transmitter that means you have to go to your subject to change gain, if you want to just set gain or change again unless you are using it on yourself. Similar way, if you want to see the gain that you have set, the lights are again on the transmitter means if you are behind the camera you cannot see it from the distance.ENDSo, in the end, is it a good choice? The main issue is range, 50 feet is really limited and can risk you in many situations unless you are going to be very close to the camera, It does come with a lot of accessories but when you are talking about this system, you have to consider rode wireless go which is pretty good value and system so it is really a tough competetion.

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I think I'm going to switch to either a wired lav mic or a shotgun mic. This (especially for the price) just doesn't cut it. There is a lot of background noise, my Blue Microphone does a better job at picking up audio from across the room.

For the money it's an OK entry level wireless system that is portable and compact. I was using it as a wireless monitor to send back audio wirelessly to my headphones so I could monitor how I sounded. When I tried to plug my headphones into the receiver unit I could not hear myself without cranking the transmitter output volume to it's maximum. But if I did that that the sound started getting lots of clipping noise. So in order to use I needed to turn transmitter volume down to avoid clipping and then plug an extra headphone amplifier unit into the receiver so that I could hear through my headphones. This then made for a more clumsy setup that I needed to carry around with my headphones. The bigger issue were occasional drop outs. Every few seconds the sound would drop out a fraction of a second. These intermittent drop outs always happened no matter the circumstances. Although the drop outs are very brief they are very disconcerting and annoying. If you want high quality sound with no drop outs then this system will not suffice. So I would say the sound quality is definitely not great but it is functional and useable.I ended up return this and got the competing product "Rode Wireless Go II" ... The Rode Wireles Go II system is about twice the cost of the Saramonic. The Rode receiver has strong line output volume that does not require an extra headphone amplifier unit. And more importantly the Rode unit has no drop outs.If you are on a tight budget and can tolerate the shortcomings of the Saramonic Blink 500 then the system will be OK. The Blink 500 won't be great, but it'll do the job. But if having intermittent drop outs of sound is going to be too annoying then you really need to get the more expensive Rode Wireless Go II instead.

This is an update of my first review. The product works great once you figure out the key, missing step from the instructions. I was unable to get the blue light on the receiver to work so pairing instructions didn't work. I sent the unit back to Amazon for a replacement figuring I received a lemon. I had the same problem with the replacement, but in trying to get it working the blue light turned on. I tried to see what happened and it went off again. After playing around with the iPhone I discovered that the iPhone needs to be in the camera mode for the RX light to work. Once I figured this out it worked like a charm. Just turn on the camera, plug the RX into the phone, turn on the TX, (I don't think the order matters), and start recording. Very easy!I tested the audio quality of the built in iPhone mic, the TX mic, and the TX lavalier. The iPhone mic was the loudest but picked up ambient noise and sounded a little tinny. This was when I was speaking into it when taking a video. My experience is that as soon as the speaking subject gets any distance away the sound drops off quickly and gets drowned out if there is much ambient noise.The TX and TX with lavalier both provided good quality sound. The lavalier was maybe a little better but in a pinch just using the TX should work. I was always within 20 feet of the iPhone so I have yet to test the range. Also, I don't know how well they work with a lot of ambient noise such as wind or automobile traffic but I am sure the sound quality will be better than the iPhone mic.I upgraded my rating to 4 stars only because the instructions left off a key step that caused me to waste a lot of time. If they fix the instructions on their YouTube video and written instructions my rating would be a 5.