Deity vs. Rode: Which Wireless Microphone is Best?

a good wireless audio system can be a really important tool to have and fortunately prices have gotten to the point where you don't need to empty your pockets to put a wireless system into your pocket so today let's put a couple of wireless systems to the test and see it e if the deity pocket wireless can go further down the road to better sound and before we start talking about both of these awesome little devices i do need to give a couple of disclosures plus spoilers as per usual so first disclosure is that deity did send me the pocket wireless for free but i don't have to make a video about it i don't have to do anything with it it was basically just a nice gift and i've actually been using it for about the past three months and i've grown to really like it the rode wireless go is something that i purchased myself at full price when it first came out i'm not under any obligation to make this video i don't have to say anything specific in this video and nobody gets to see this video before i publish it i'm making it just because i genuinely do like this product and more importantly i actually like the deity pocket wireless better than the rode wireless go so that's my spoiler on this review so to just jump ahead to the end of the review if you have the rode wireless go it's awesome you're all set you don't need to get rid of this to get the deity however if you don't have a wireless system that's where i would recommend the deity over the road and now i'll explain why so the thing about these two systems is that they're very very similar in a lot of ways and i have to give road credit because they were at least as far as i know kind of the ones that kicked off this idea of having a very small transmitter receiver set up that's relatively affordable where the transmitter is also a microphone that's pretty cool and now we've seen other offerings from other companies come out and the deity doesn't necessarily bring any revolutionary technology to the table but it brings a lot of quality of life features that make it for me at least much more enjoyable to use than the road and i also think it's overall a better value now also important to note that we're talking about the rode wireless go 1 the original which is a single transmitter to receiver system we're not talking about the rode wireless go 2 which could you believe it has two transmitters that's a totally different thing the manufacturer's suggested retail price for the original wireless go is 199. dollars the go-to is 299 so there's a big price difference there the msrp for the deity pocket wireless is 169 dollars so it's 30 less than the road however deity did send me the pocket wireless mobile kit which includes this little tripod and a phone mount so if you wanted to use it with your phone you could and this specific kit retails for 199 dollars which is the same price as the road but if you don't need the tripod or the phone mount then that means you can get the same single transmitter single receiver system for 169 dollars versus 199 now we all know what they say when you assume things you save a lot of time and never come to the wrong conclusion so i'm going to make some assumptions that you're probably already familiar with these basic systems which like i mentioned earlier you have a receiver and you have a transmitter the transmitter hangs out on the person who's talking and the receiver goes to your camera or whatever device you want to record the audio now these are both 2.4 gigahertz systems which is probably just about enough for any normal average creator video production person audio production person and each system has a little clip on the back which is the exact same size as the accessory shoe on cameras and devices and stuff like that so you just put the receiver right there and then the transmitter can either be clipped onto a person's shirt or put into a pocket and then you run a lavalier microphone super important to notice though one of my favorite mic accessories ever the rode interview go which is a stick and then you put the transmitter for the wireless go on here pop on the windscreen and now you have a wireless microphone system i love this it's really cool it fits the wireless go perfectly because that's what it was designed for but since we are talking about the same accessory shoe size slot you can mount the deity and then as you can see it fits in pretty well and then the windscreen actually fits almost perfectly on top of it and then you still can use the interview go with the deity pocket wireless we should probably connect these so that way you can hear what they sound like but before that i have been waiting to do something for the three months that i've had this which is still has a little plastic protective coating on here and that was the most important part of this video so the setup process is pretty easy you just turn on the receiver you turn on the transmitter they're automatically paired on both of these systems you then just connect them to the microphone jack on your camera or whatever audio device that you're using and then you've got the transmitter the microphones right here so just for a basic sound quality test right now i'm using the shure sm7b running through the road caster pro and now this is the rode wireless go so this is the rode wireless go through the transmitter and this is the deity pocket wireless so this is the dd pocket wireless and again the rode wireless go rode wireless go deity pocket wireless deity pocket wireless and what we'll do for the remainder of this video is actually kind of remove the sm7b and we will just stick with using one of these i will put a note on screen whichever one is currently being used the deity or the road now the thing that is nice about these is if you're in a pinch and you need good audio you have your microphone right here and you just clip it on your shirt however i'm personally not a fan of this i don't think this is a great look having a big just a thing right in front of your person when they're talking when i see people wearing the rode wireless go or another one of these systems it's the first thing i notice in the frame and i find that really really distracting both systems also come with windscreens so the road has a little thing that clips on right here in case you're outside you need to protect it from wind but then this becomes even more distracting the deity is extremely similar you can clip it to your shirt and then it also comes with a windscreen that clips in and then you can use this in the wind now if you have to choose between somebody not having a microphone on them and bad audio versus somebody having a distracting mic like this and good audio i would lean towards prioritizing the good audio so i think these are great if you're in a pinch however 99 of the time that i'm using these i'm using them with a lavalier microphone system and the transmitter is just in my pocket and this is an area where the deity really does outdo the road so you probably notice the dd comes in this little case right here which is bigger than the case that the road comes in and you might think hey tom but smaller and more compact but this gets very cramped and very full very fast whereas the dd case is still really small and you have foam cutouts for both parts of the system plus little nets up here to keep track of everything and it comes with a lavalier microphone so whether you get the regular set or the mobile set you're going to get a lavalier microphone with it with the rode i had to buy a lavalier microphone separately the rode lavalier go like the one that's kind of made for it it's usually about 70 so that's more money that you're investing it's a great microphone and it sounds really good but also so does the one that comes with the deity this is a great microphone and if you can see right here the deity actually has a locking 3.5 millimeter jack so on the transmitter the input has threads around it and then you connect the lavalier microphone lock it down and now it's not going to come out on the road you can just pull the microphone out this is normally what you find on much more expensive wireless systems and i think that that is awesome i should also mention some of those other quality of life features that i talked about with the deity a big one being just the power switch it just has a switch that you flip on or off and that's it the road has a button on the bottom of the transmitter on the receiver that you have to hold down for three seconds and then turn it on it doesn't sound like a big deal and it's not and that system does prevent you from accidentally turning things on or off however there have been so many times where i think i hold it down long enough and then i stop and i'm like oh wait it didn't turn on and i hold it down again and again and the thing that should take four seconds probably just because i'm impatient ends up taking like 20 seconds just to turn on or turn off and the transmitter on the deity has a little button on the side that you can use for re-linking and repairing if you need to but if you just press it once it'll you'll see a red light start blinking and that means the transmitter has been muted and if you press it again it will unmute very important to make sure that that red light's not blinking when you start recording and that you didn't accidentally mute the system so i want to set these up as lavaliers because that's how i prefer to use them and again like i mentioned i think that's one of the huge strengths of the deity is that it just comes with a really nice little lavalier microphone so i think i have a brilliant way of labeling them so you can tell which one is which the one with the r on it is the really good deity sounding microphone and the one with the d on it is the delightful road sounding microphone i'm just kidding that would make no sense the r is for the road and the d is for the deity because that's how words work and of course i'll keep putting a label on screen as i've been doing throughout this entire video so you know which microphone you're listening to probably makes this redundant but oh well also just a heads up whenever you're positioning a lavalier microphone if possible try to position it on the person's chest and you're probably going to get the best sound it's very common a lot of times for people to clip them way up on collars and things but then the microphone lavalier microphones which are usually omnidirectional which means they just eat sound from every direction if they're under your chin and under your neck they're picking up weird versions of the sound waves that are coming out of your mouth if it's down at your chest it's a little more it's a little easier for the microphones to pick up more natural sounding sound waves so you're probably going to get better sound if the lavalier microphone is positioned a little lower but if all you've got is a collar of a shirt or you need to be creative and hide it under a hat or a wig or something of course you can totally do that just do some sound tests to make sure they sound good no matter what system you're using before you actually start recording and like i said earlier i've been using the dd pocket wireless for about three months now i've used it on a lot of different videos and streams even though i haven't specifically mentioned it yet if you watch my gopro hero 10 review that entire video was done with the pocket wireless so you can hear how it works in a real world situation if you want to check that out now before we do some more rigorous testing of these two systems let's dive in and talk about some of the specs to see what makes each one special one of the biggest questions you'll probably have with either of these systems is what is the distance what is the range that you can use them for the rode wireless go is rated for 70 meters which is about 229 feet and the pocket wireless not quite at that distance is rated for 65 meters which is 213 feet now what makes this interesting to me is that even though the deity is rated for less distance i've actually had better luck with it and i've had fewer instances of it dropping out in fact so far i actually haven't had it drop out battery life is another concern of course a big downside to both of these systems is that they have built-in batteries that are non-replaceable the road which i've had for about almost two years now is rated for seven hours of battery life and i have no problem still reaching that time not that i ever really use it for that long but i really need to charge it i basically only charge it out of paranoia and anxiety which is why i do most of the things i do in my life anyway however once the battery starts dying and failing and the battery health goes down you can't just replace it you got to get a whole new system that's a bummer for both of these just in terms of creating e-waste and non-repairability the deity though is rated for five hours instead of seven hours so not quite as long battery life but again i don't really use these for five to seven hour continuous stints that's just not how my workflow is so it hasn't been any kind of issue for me but just be aware that if you're planning to use these on a full day of shooting like a 12 or a 14 hour day and you're not going to have time to charge them you're probably going to need backups or different systems but the big thing here the big reason i wanted to make this video is because of those quality of life improvements that the deity has it's not that either one of these is big but this one is just a little smaller easier to use easier to hide this is a little bigger and bulkier although i'm being very generous with my use of the word bulky because this is still very compact the deity has the locking microphone the road doesn't so that means if i pull on this nothing will happen if i pull on this then the microphone comes out the fact that the deity includes the lavalier is huge for me and my specific workflow and the display on the receiver of the d80 is in my opinion better than the receiver of the go wireless road rode wireless go the other one they're both good but the deity is just clearer and easier to see and i just i just find it more useful and easier to understand the deity is also nice because while both systems let you see your levels bouncing up and down in real time the dd actually has markers for negative 12 and negative six decibels so you can really kind of dial in your sound more easily and i appreciate that and in terms of gain the rode wireless go kind of just has low medium and high you can just sort of adjust it that way and they're i believe they're six decibel increments whereas the dd has three decibel increments and there's 10 different levels so you can keep pushing the button which can kind of be annoying if you're trying to dial it in exactly right and you go past like you're trying to get to six and then you go to seven you gotta go like eight nine ten one two three four five and go back around again but you have a lot more fine control over the deities gain than you do on the road wireless go when you just say those things it doesn't sound like much but when you're actually using the device they're just small quality of life improvements that make it more enjoyable to use and considering the fact that it's cheaper that's why i would recommend the deity over the road you know how much i freaking love roads so it means a lot that i would say i recommend the deity over the road but as i mentioned at the beginning of this video if you already have the road it's great and just keep it and be happy with it because this thing is awesome but let's put these to the test now because maybe just maybe that will help bring out some key differences that will make your decision a little easier so i'm going to do a basic comparison of something i've noticed where it seems like the deity has outperformed the road there have been times where i've been working in here or streaming in here and i need to go get something from our garage which in a straight line is probably about 40 feet or 12 meters away but to get there got to go around a whole bunch of walls the walls of course have cables and pipes and things in them and then the garage itself is a fire door and insulation so now we've got both microphones recording and i'm basically just gonna walk out into our garage and see how far i can go and which one is the best all right so now i'm walking through our kitchen walking through our like living room going towards the garage door going towards the garage door opening the garage door i'm in the garage so it'll be interesting to see if you can still hear me on either of these or both of them now i'm walking even further away i'm at the corner of the right now because i want to go outside if either of them are that's the better one and you should definitely get that one but i can't imagine either would make sense it's like not before uh back in here so we'll see if this had cut out at what point will it come back in so looking at that they performed fairly evenly i'm impressed that both of them worked as i went into the garage because i kind of wouldn't have expected that with all the different barriers interference and definitely no direct line of sight situation happening the road started to cut out as i went to like the corner of the garage and to the outside you really didn't hear anything whereas the deity held on a little bit longer and was actually able to pick up a few things i said when i was outside but it wasn't like reliable it was still cutting in and out but if i had to choose a winner it would be the deity because it did work a bit more reliably and work for longer and they both picked up signal as soon as they were able to they both seamlessly picked up their signal again and held it until they came all the way back in here but that's a very specific use case scenario so let's try some other range tests by putting the pocket wireless in the pocket and hitting the road to go out to a different spot outside so now i'm outside and it's kind of windy so that might be helpful or not and basically i'm just going to keep the mics on and then i'm going to wirelessly go down this road and just see how far i go before stuff cuts out so here we go now we will see we've got both microphones going and now i have to go for a little bit i guess and test the gopro so this was kind of an interesting development with my test which was i didn't realize i was walking away with my back to the camera the whole time so line of sight was obstructed by me and so almost immediately it dropped signal and you didn't get to hear any of my amazing witty banter did you hear speaking of microphones have you heard about the microphone company that never did customer surveys they weren't very good at handling feedback because feedback and microphones are like a thing it's terms and stuff and then as soon as i turned around started coming back it was when i was about 50 feet away from the cameras that the signal started coming in a bit more clearly which performed the other in my experience uh the deity has been really really good and i really like it you can't go wrong with either of them keeps it not burped keep saying that can't go wrong with either of them go okay we're getting now feet away i am from from the cameras but i would say i'm probably 50 feet away from them now uh probably 30 feet 20 feet and now i'm real close they're just right there so there's everything it's kind of honestly a little bit disappointing i don't know maybe my test was bad but you know do with it what you will all right someone's coming to arrest me i gotta go this is always kind of a thing that happens when you're using drones where even when you're flying where you're allowed to even when you have your faa license people suddenly like to think that they're experts in everything and they get real weird about the sky you don't own the sky coming back to the whole point of the tests though i probably did a bad job because i didn't go i didn't do direct line of sight and i guess i should have i've only got one camera going so it's the only one i can use here's the deity pocket wireless facing the camera and if i keep it facing the camera but i go around the car i'm talking i'm talking i'm going around the car now there's a giant metal car between us and now i'm coming back around on the other side of the car but the microphone was facing the camera the whole time okay now i'm just on the gopro real quick because i had a thought that i realized i didn't include earlier which is i should say if you want something that is insanely reliable for wireless audio that's where you need to buy something like i don't know a sennheiser g4 some kind of professional level wireless device those are going to cost you significantly more money maybe between 600 800 even upwards of a thousand more dollars for 169 199 very much consumer level wireless audio systems i do think both of these perform very well and as long as they have a clear signal the audio quality is nice and now that you've seen and heard both of these hopefully you can see what the difference is and which one would be right for you hopefully you can also see why they're both awesome but why at a less expensive price with the quality of life features and what seems to be a bit better performance i prefer and recommend the deity but you can't go wrong either way and speaking of things that are reliable thank you to everybody who helped support my channel through patreon and youtube channel memberships i really really appreciate that i love you and if you want to know more details about the rode wireless go check out my full review here where i dive into everything super in depth [Music] you

Channel: Tom Buck

Views: 9,061

Keywords: deity, deity pocket wireless, rode wireless go, deity vs rode, wireless microphone, deity microphones, wireless mic, best wireless system, wireless microphone for youtube videos, deity wireless mic, rode wireless mic, deity pocket, deity pocket wireless mobile kit, deity pocket wireless review, deity pocket review, deity pocket vs rode go, wireless mic reivew, cheap wireless microphone, wireless lavalier mic, wireless lav mic, lav mic

Id: mh7a7HjqtMs

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 18 2021