Hollyland Lark M2 Review - Tiny Wireless Mic

if you're in the market for a straightforward simpl to use and relatively affordable wireless mic there are suddenly a ton of choices on the market just in the last year it seems like every company out there has released a wireless mic kit but not all of them are this tiny this is the lar M2 from hollyland and we're going to test it out to see if it's a good choice for Content creators who don't want to spend more than $200 on a microphone kit before we dive in I want to mention that Holly Land did not send me the lar M2 I purchased it myself I actually saw the combo kit on Amazon with a discount so I picked it up because I've been interested in checking it out I do have an Amazon affiliate Link in the description for you if you're interested in picking up the lar M2 and you'd like to support this Channel all right so let's get started we've got a lot to cover even though the lar M2 is a pretty simple and straightforward wireless mic kit these are just open the case connect a receiver and hit record type mics and that's not a bad thing at all I'm just saying this kit is not in the same Market segment as the more full featured kits like the road Wireless Pro the DJI Mike 2 or Hol land's own lar Max and the lar M2 is much more affordable than those kits as well the audio you're hearing right now is the lar M2 running into the camera receiver which is connected to my Panasonic Lumix s52 over the 3.5 mm output the camera receiver is set to the second two out of three in terms of the level I won't be doing any postprocessing to the audio in this video other than normalizing the level to minus 16 lufs and I will use a limiter to make sure there isn't any clipping but there won't be any EQ or compression or other processing applied let's start by talking about what you get with the lar M2 depending on which kit you buy I have the combo kit here which comes with multiple receivers and everything you need to use the lar M2 with any camera smartphone tablet or computer in the box is two transmitters three types of receivers the charging case the 3.5 mm cable a USB cable wind muffs magnets and mag magnetic Clips lanyards and some stickers that you can use to cover the hollyland logo on the transmitters and I personally appreciate that but there are also kit versions with just one of the receivers you can get the mics with just the mini USBC receiver just the mini lightning receiver or just the camera receiver you can occasionally snag a discount on Amazon like I did so keep an eye out for that all right let's talk about compatibility of the different kit options the camera receiver has a 3.5 mm output of course for your camera but it also has a USBC output so you can use that receiver with computers smartphones and tablets just like the mini USBC receiver it's not as Tiny and you do have to use a cable to connect it to one of those devices but it is more versatile technically than the mini receivers because it has both outputs it's also the only receiver to have a level adjustment on it it's very basic you just turn the dial to adjust the output level up or down with three different levels to choose from with the mini receivers you have to use the software to adjust the input put level you can do that in a couple different ways either with the lar sound mobile app which will directly control the level of your mic or if your recording app has a setting for mic level that you can control by the way the Lark sound app also allows you to update the firmware wirelessly which is pretty cool now there's one other feature that is exclusive to the camera receiver and that is two channel stereo recording the mini receivers will connect to both of the transmitters in the kit at the same time but the signal is going to be merged in to a mono output so if you plan to record two people with the mics and you want to be able to edit the audio from each person separately in post only the camera receiver is capable of doing that and unfortunately it gets even more limited than that the camera receiver can only do two channel stereo output over the 3.5 mm connection not the USB connection you just have no option to do that with any of the receivers connected over USB if you are using the 3.5mm output you can change modes by pressing the button with the m next to to it on the receiver and the lights for the output level will turn green for the stereo output now regardless of which receiver you use the signal is 24-bit depth with 48 khz sample rate whether you actually record 24-bit audio is going to be determined by the device that you connect the receiver to and your recording settings but your audio quality won't be limited by the lar M2 as for the other specs the transmitter mics have an omnidirectional polar pattern and a frequency response of 20 HZ to 20 khz a signal to noise ratio of greater than 70 DB according to hollyland a Max SPL of 115 DB and a sensitivity ofus 37 dbv which just means they have an average sensitivity for a condenser microphone let's talk about a few more features in specs and put these to use in a few different situations all right here's a quick sample of the Lark M2 in a kind of a vlogging style setup running into my iPhone 15 Pro Max I have the mini USB receiver connected straight to the iPhone no extra rigging just on a magnetic Mount I do have an ND filter on because it is very bright today but we are going out to the street so that we can test the noise reduction and see how much that actually works all right this is the sound at this intersection with noise reduction turned off and now this is the sound at this very busy noisy intersection with noise reduction turn on this is really loud I'm very close to the traffic so I don't expect this to do a fantastic job but we'll see how good of a job it can do in this kind of extreme scenario hopefully you won't have to try and record in an environment like this all right and now noise reduction is turned back off all right now we're using the DJI osmo pocket 3 for a sample of the lar M2 I have the mini USBC receiver pluged straight into the back of the battery grip now if maybe you're looking for a two mic kit for your pocket 3 but the DJI mic 2 is a little bit more than you want to spend I thought this would be a good test to see if the lar M2 is a good additional option for you I have it sitting on a tripod right now we're going to walk around with it in just a second but before we do that I just want to point out one of the big complaints I have heard other reviewers make or seen in other articles about the lar M2 is about the wind screen here or the wind muff and it's that once you put it on it does cover up the entire transmitter then you can't see which side is facing up and that's kind of an important thing right you need to see where the microphone is pointed because you want it pointing up well actually I think anybody who's made that comment has missed a small but important detail and that's that when you remove the magnet from the back of the lar M2 transmitter there's a little arrow pointing up towards the microphone so all you have to do after you put the wind muff on is remove the magnet from the back and look at which way the arrow is pointing and make sure you get that facing up so to me not a big deal could it be better sure it could because you still can't see the button to switch on or off your noise reduction mode but you definitely can tell which direction the microphone is facing if you just take that magnet off and look for the Arrow all right now we're taking the pocket 3 for a walk here I don't expect anything less than great uh Vlog performance from the pocket 3 because it it's a fantastic Vlog camera but the microphone that's a question mark right because if you don't have the DJI mic 2 what microphone is easy to use with the pocket 3 that doesn't require a bunch of wires and things hanging off of it that still allow you to handhold it well the lar M2 with its mini USBC receiver could be an answer for you because even even though I am handholding this and I do have the battery grip installed it's still pretty easy for me to do this it is not awkward in the least and in fact this is this is really not in my way at all I do have the battery grip on as I mentioned so if you don't have the battery grip or if you're not using it the mini USBC receiver would be sticking off the bottom which would make it a little bit harder to hold on to and now just for comparison this is a sample of the DJI mik 2 and of course I have the wind muff installed here the big Advantage with the DJI mic 2 well actually two big advantages one of them is that for the pocket 3 or actually the action 4 if you have the DJI action 4 you can connect directly to the camera via a Bluetooth connection and get audio directly in there without having to plug in or connect anything a second Advantage is you have 32-bit internal recording in the transmitter so if you ever do have a Dropout or interference then you're still going to have the backup recording by the way I do not have the low cut filter turned on on the mic to this is just the raw sound of the built-in mic let me know down in the comments which did you like better the sound of the lm2 or the DJI Mike 2 all right now we're going to do our range test with the lm2 and this is recording into my iPhone 15 Pro Max okay now we're at 25 M away from the camera and as you can tell this is already pretty darn far away from the camera I don't really see a reason why I would ever need to film further than 25 M away from my camera because I shoot everything by myself and I don't want someone to walk away with my camera but I would expect not to have any issues whatsoever I'm in a field complete open clear line of sight here so I wouldn't expect to have issues here the Lark M2 according to Holly Land works up to 1,000 ft or 300 M so we're certainly not testing that limit here this is just 25 M and now we're at 50 m away from the camera and with this field of view on the iPhone I have a feeling you probably can barely see me anymore at this point but this is 50 m making sure I'm going to turn around here if the transmitter and the reer at 50 m so this was the 50 m test now I'm facing the camera again this is the distance where I have run into issues with other wireless mic kits even though they rate themselves as working well beyond 100 m this is also a distance where I don't really see the need for most content creators to be working at this distance to their camera so this is as far as I'm going to be testing it we'll see how strong the signal was at 100 m all right now before we talk about my overall impressions of the lar M2 let's do a comparison to some other wireless mics and we'll talk about two features that the lar M2 doesn't have in front of me we've got transmitters for the lar M2 the road Wireless go-to the road Wireless Pro the DJI Mike 2 the hollyland lar Max and the Cino G2 Pro I'll put the prices of all these up on the screen so you can see the price range that we're working with here I'm recording all of these at the same time by using the internal recording that most of these have the wireless recording for the lm2 is still going into my Panasonic Lumix s52 and then the Cinco G2 Pro also does not have internal recording so that one is going wirelessly to the receiver plugged into my MacBook I'm recording that one into audacity all of the others here have internal recording so we're going to be using the internal recording from the transmitter so really this is not a comparison of Wireless performance this is just so you can hear the sound of all of these different wireless mics while we're talking so as I mentioned out of all of these only the Cinco G2 Pro and the lar M2 do not have internal recording in the transmitters all of the others have that internal recording so you always have that as a backup if your signal drops out or if you have interference with that wireless transmission now the DJI mic 2 and the road Wireless Pro both have 32-bit internal recording which means not only do you have your audio backup but you also don't have to worry about clipping due to any sound that gets too loud as long as it's not so loud that it exceeds the max SPL of the microphone which would be pretty rare the wireless goto and the lar Max also have internal recording but 24-bit internal recording so is this feature really important well it kind of depends on how you're using your wireless mics in the type of content that you create if you don't regularly record in areas that have a lot of 2.4 GHz air traffic then you're less likely to run into interference and spotty signals the worst case scenario for mic kits like this would be like a convention flooor where there's a ton of Wi-Fi signals around lots of media using 2.4 GHz microphones that environment is just asking for drop signals and interference but even recording in places like airports or busy tourist spots where there's a lot of Wi-Fi around even that can cause issues the second consideration is the nature of your content regardless of any of that interference or Dropout issue if you regularly record scripted or planned content that you can repeat easily then it's possible to re-shoot something if you realize after the fact that your audio dropped out and if your content is mostly short form content that's even less of a headache because it's you know it's annoying but it's not the end of the world if you have to re-shoot a 30-second video but if your content tends to be the type of things that are difficult or impossible to re-shoot like onetime only interviews or events that are never going to happen again then bad audio means your project is scrapped because you can't just do it over again so if that's the bulk of your content then internal recording is definitely good insurance to have now let's just briefly mention the one other feature that all of these kits have that the lar M2 does not a 3.5 mm input on the transmitter for a lav mic this is one of those things I don't think I need to talk about a lot because you most likely know whether you need that or not having the option is nice because if you shoot something where you or a guest don't like having a transmitter visible on you then you can just have them or yourself you can put it in a pocket with a more discret lav mic clipped on somewhere instead however I do like the sound quality of the lamp to transmitter mic so I don't like have a reason to want a different sound from a different mic and the one big Advantage it has over all of these other kits is that the transmitter is way smaller so they're nowhere near as obvious even if you have it stuck right to the front of your shirt with the magnet so there probably would be fewer cases where you definitely want to go smaller because it's already tiny all right so that's it for the comparison let me know which one of these you like the sound of best down in the comments okay now for some pros and cons and my overall recommendation I'll keep this relatively short because we've pretty much already covered who I think these are a good option for as far as the pros the size of the transmitters is really nice I cannot deny that it's very nice and convenient to have a transmitter this tiny you don't even notice you're wearing it it's hard to notice on screen especially if you have multiple layers of clothing on it's just great that it's so tiny also the sound quality is surprisingly good for the price point and I like that they stuck with 24-bit audio and didn't drop it down to 16bit just to lower the price more in fact the quality of everything in the kit is nice and the battery life is also very good for something this small I like that they offer different kit options as well so you don't need to buy parts that you know you won't use and overall I think the price point is fair for what you're getting even if you buy the combo kit and pay the highest price and when it comes to the range I don't really necessarily want to call that a pro or a con because whether it's exactly what you need or not it was reliable for me at reasonable distances now as far as some cons here it really depends on what your needs are and how you're going to be using your wireless mics you could definitely consider the lack of internal recording or an input for lav mics as a con but in my opinion that's not the point of this kit now if you need those features it's just not for you and that's okay but that being said even if this fits your use case there are still a couple cons to consider here one small thing that can be kind of frustrating is with the mini receivers here if you have a case on your phone and you're using it with a smartphone it's not necessarily going to fit on all cases it really depends on how thick your case is for example this is an iPhone 15 Pro Max with a case from spec this will pop in if I really push it it'll pop in and the lights will turn on but it also pops back out very easily like it is really lightly connected there so any little vibration is going to loosen that to the point where it disconnects it with this case I would have to take the case off my phone to to Really reliably have this plugged in now while that may just be a minor frustration here the bigger con that I think applies to more people is that you cannot do the two channel stereo recording with the mini receivers over the USB connection or on the camera receiver over the USB connection it only works with that 3.5 mm output so if you do a lot of recording of two people and you want to be able to control that audio for each person separately like I don't know editing out somebody sneezing while the other person is talking you can't do that unless you're using the lar M2 with that 3.5 mm output so that might be a deal breaker for some people and that would be fair now I do think the wind muff situation is a little finicky I'd put this as another minor annoyance in my opinion with the lar M2 it's a little finicky to get it put on first and then you can't see the noise reduction button or the indicator light the status light once it's installed I don't have the issue with not knowing what way the microphone's pointing as I mentioned earlier because of that little arrow on the back but it's still not the best overall experience with the wind muff it's not a deal breaker for me but it is kind of a usability annoyance now other than those things I don't see any additional deal breaker type downsides for the price and I do recommend the lar M2 if you're in the market for a straightforward and compact wireless mic kit as long as the limitation for stereo recording isn't a problem for you and you don't have a strong need for that internal recording in the transmitter so that'll do it for my review of the lar M2 let me know what you think of it down in the comments be sure to let me know which of all of those wireless mics you like the sound of better as far as the built-in mics on the transmitters let me know if you picked up the LM 2 for yourself and how you're liking it don't forget to subscribe to the semipro teeken gear Channel and while you're here why don't to check out one of these videos I'm sure you'll enjoy it thanks everybody see you next time

Channel: SemiPro Tech+Gear

Views: 15,247

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Id: JH8ZdCt4o8I

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2024