Instamic Pro & Saramonic Blink 500 Tested at Nana Plaza Hooters!

Hey everyone! I’m still in Bangkok avoiding the winter chill in Shenzhen for a few weeks. Back in Shenzhen, I use Sony camcorders and the Rode Wireless Filmmaker kit. You can see this setup in the earlier video I did about what equipment I use. That’s all a little bulky for travel though. So I picked up the Saramonic Blink 500, a much smaller wireless microphone.

00:37 - I’m going to be testing how that works compared to a USB lavaliere mic connected to my phone, and the Instamic, a standalone audio recording device I’m wearing right now. This video is being recorded with my Nubia Z20 which I’ve also reviewed previously. It’s a great bet for a low-cost vlogging phone. The Instamic and the Blink500 do different things so this is not really a comparison. I’ll just be showing you what they do, and what don’t do well. The Instamic is a standalone audio recorder, that means you add its audio track to the video in post-production. The Blink 500 is a wireless microphone. It replaces your camera’s built-in audio. This is much more convenient but it also means fewer audio tracks during a shoot, and more tracks mean more options for clear audio in post-production. Ok, let’s unbox them, and take a look! So what I have here is the USB microphone that a lot of vlogging blogger use. It’s not an if or situation because if you don’t carry these, you will always have this, right? So get one of these, no matter what. Now I am going to plug it into my phone and record to see the quality of it. So the voice recorder is recording. Hello, hello, testing 1,2,3! Testing, testing.

02:17 - There is a clip you can also clip it onto your shirt and then put the phone in your pocket. Right now it is done. Alright. Not bad. So get one of these, it is cheap. Next, let’s take a look at these two. These two, ok this is what I use in Shenzhen. You see, I put this on the camera. This is the transmitter and this one is the Blink K500 UC receiver. You just plug it into your phone. Let’s open it. Now let’s take a look. Wow. Wow, it’s tinier than the picture that shows on the box. So this is their transmitter. Two of them. This is the receiver, you can just plug it into the phone. Now it’s blinking. Alright, I will test it outside.

03:29 - So what’s in this box? Probably a USB cable. Yeah, right. There is a USB cable in there. I am going to test it outside so I am going to set it aside. And this is the one I use in Shenzhen, this is the Saramonic Blink 500 receiver. Same, pretty small this one. It only has a clip not magnet like the Instamic. So I am going to be using that to demo that to you later. Just USB cable, alright. Their packaging is not bad and the quality feels good. Okay, this is the Instamic just like the one I am wearing. Let’s open it. Ok, let’s see what’s in the box. So this is like a sock? Socks. You can put it on the Instamic to change the color. Mine is, the one I am wearing right now is just black. But this one is white. Oh, wow. See, this is the same size as my other microphone.

05:18 - The Open-Source Creality Ender-3 is under 200 dollars and it can print thousands of different standard pieces of photo gear often in under an hour. It’s a great investment for any photographer. So right now I am at Nana. I am going to Hooters to have lunch. I am also wearing my Instamic, Saramonic mic and my USB microphone. A lavalier microphone and I am recording three of them at the same time. I am holding my phone on one hand and holding my gimbal on the other hand. It’s pretty sunny outside. I don’t know if this footage will come out ok. Because the sun is so harsh.

06:17 - Ok, right now is better, it looks better and you can hear the noise in the background, right? Because of a lot of traffic, just a lot of traffic, a lot of cars, they have a traffic light in this street but it’s always an adventure to cross the road. Speaking of which a car is in front of me and I hope it doesn’t bump into me. Oh my god, so I come here so early in the afternoon, it is still early. I like Hooters a lot. So right now I am going in. You see? Alright. So the background music is playing, I am testing while talking. So I have my Saramonic mic, Instamic, and my USB microphone. Right now the first test is for the Instamic. I think I am going to order something. I feel like fried chicken again, today. I forget what they serve here, nachos or something. Alright now switch to the Sramonic mic. What I am seeing right now is salads, taco salads. I feel like I would pass that. Yeah, french fries. What was that called? Tortilla with the meat on it. What was that? I forgot. Ok now test for my USB microphone. There are some cocktails, shots, non-alcoholic. I feel like having a beer right now.

08:01 - Alright alright alright! I’ve moved hotel rooms since I started testing these so we’ve got a bit of a different background going here. General impressions- and again this is not a comparison. The USB lav mic is a basic everyone should have. One mistake I made was I had the recording quality set a little lower than I should have. Make sure if you get one of these, to check the settings on your phone and record at the best possible rate. The Blink 500- I shot a bit of video where the audio was intermittent. This turned out to be because I hadn’t put the USB jack firmly on the phone. It’s a good thing I had another audio channel recording or I would have lost the whole video. Definitely, something to be careful of, a USB jack isn’t an XLR jack and will have a higher failure rate- so keep an eye on it. Overall the Blink 500 was very easy to set up and use, very compact. No fiddling or weird button combinations.

09:11 - I love that I can use it with my phone or my camera. I love that there are two transmitters so I can interview people. I don’t have the Rode Wireless Filmmaker kit with me but it certainly seems to be comparable and with two transmitters I can also record with one while charging the other. I’ll test both the Rode and the Saramonic when I’m back in Shenzhen but I’m certainly leaning towards the Saramonic Blink 500. The Instamic! This one is hard, I really hate it, but I also need it and use it constantly.

09:50 - I’ve had the Instamic for several months, and you may have seen it in a few of my videos. The size is perfect, the memory space is more than enough, the battery life has been sufficient and the audio quality quite good. But the firmware flashing procedure requires a long process where you have to register at their website first, download an app and the firmware file and then flash the Instamic from your computer. You can’t just upgrade it over Bluetooth from the mobile app. You also can’t just drag the firmware file to the Instamic when you have it mounted on your computer as a drive you have to use their dodgy app.

10:35 - Even then, I could not get the firmware update to take. The Instamic mobile app is pretty good for changing settings over Bluetooth, no complaints there. I had some phone crashes and disconnects when trying to record audio with the Instamic while connected over Bluetooth to the app though, so it’s really best for changing settings not control or monitoring while you are shooting. The controls on the Instamic itself are a complete dumpster fire. They’re so bad I honestly was wondering if someone was playing a joke.

11:16 - It’s been a long time since I’ve used a UI this bad. There are three LEDs that light up in cryptic combinations you are supposed to remember. It has a single button with no tactile feedback. No click when you press, no movement, no anything. You press it and wait to see if the press registered. But, it’s a multimode button- and as we’ve discussed multimode buttons are almost always bad design. So, you have to turn it on, activate, and deactivate it with a series of long and short button presses which you will always forget because they are completely non- intuitive and you have a hundred other bad UIs in your life to keep track of. Then once it’s been recording for a bit all the lights go off and there’s no way to know from looking at it if the battery died, or if it’s still recording. I’d love something this size, with just an on and off switch. Nothing else, turn the switch on, it’s recording, you can see it’s on and recording from the switch position. Flip the switch and it turns off. That’s it. Nice and simple.

12:31 - There’s nothing the Bluetooth app does I can’t live without for the sake of reliable, simple, field operation. You can’t be in the middle of a crowded street, trying to remember what special combination of button presses will one specific product start recording. I don’t have a crew, it’s just me, I also need to maintain situational awareness and pay attention to what’s going on around me, I don’t need to be distracted by fiddly equipment. Last, the Instamic has this little clip and a magnet. The clip is really fragile and it’s the only way to attach anything to the Instamic.

13:15 - And it’s not compatible with any other photography grip equipment hot shoe mounts, quarter twenty threads, GoPro mounts. If you want to mount your Instamic to your gear you’re looking at zip ties and double stick tape. Unless you 3D print your own right? Not so fast- after breaking two microphone clips I asked them to send me the CAD file for the clip so I could just print my own and make adapters to standard photography gear. They refused. This clip- it’s not the body of the microphone, you can not reverse engineer anything from it to knock off their product. The only reason to do this is if you know the clips break and want the consumer to keep buying replacements from you.

14:05 - That means you have no incentive to design something that does not break because you’re selling a consumable. It’s a complex organic shape that would take me half a day to model in CAD and frankly, with the way they are going, I’m not convinced they are going to be around long enough to make me investing that much of my time in their product worthwhile. The Instamic is a simple product a small audio recorder, made overly complicated to justify charging a premium price. Personally, I’d pay the same for it to have less features and a more reliable design. My feeling is probably, somebody will make something simpler and better pretty soon.

14:56 - That being said- all my dislike for the Instamic design aside, I use it all the time, and I have not found anything better. Having an extra audio track is cheap insurance on a lot of videos, some of my cameras don’t have a microphone jack, I use the Instamic with them. Yes, it’s very poorly designed and the company does not seem to care about those design issues, but it’s not easily replaceable yet. If I lose it tomorrow- I’d buy a replacement, I’d be screaming at myself the whole time, but it does pay for itself and it is a very useful product for a vlogger. That said, it’s not the first microphone I’d buy.

15:42 - I’d say first buy USB lav mic, then a small shotgun mic, then a wireless lav mic like the Blink 500, and then the Instamic. There we go, I hope that was interesting. Thanks for your patience while I’m in Bangkok waiting for the situation in China to improve. I’ll be back there and back to doing DIY videos as soon as it’s safe and practical. Until then, thanks for watching- and remember if I can do it, anyone can do it. .