Ulanzi U-Mic AM18 | The BEST Budget Wireless Microphone?
This week we’re looking at the Ulanzi U-Mic. Is it the best budget mic on the market? Let’s find out!
Welcome to Smartphone Storytellers, where my goal is to teach you how to tell stories using the smartphone you've already got. This week, we're going to be looking at a new product that I picked up on sale. I don't know if it's officially out yet or if they're just doing a pre-purchase offer, but I picked it up for, I think, 79 bucks. It's normally 100, but don't quote me on that. It is the Ulanzi U-mic AM18.
So, you got a manual, I got a little case, USB-C to USB-C, USB-A to USB-C, Lightning to 3.5 mm, and then 3.5 to 3.5. We also got a little windscreen and another one. Now for the main event, we got the mic. It comes in a little charging case. It's a little bulky but still can fit into a backpack. It opens up—oh, just kidding. I was going to say there's no LED indicators, but there are LED indicators on the front to show you how much charge you got. When you open it up, it shows the charge for your receiver and your two transmitters. It's got a nice build; it's a little plasticky but seems solid enough. USB-C on the back to charge it.
Look at these mics: we got our battery indicator, our pairing indicator, and we have a record indicator. You do have an option to attach a lapel mic, which is awesome. It does not have a screw-in; it's just a pop-in like a normal 3.5 mm pop-in, but it seems like it's a nice tight connection at least, so it doesn't seem like it would pop out depending on your connection. USB-C on the side, record button on the side here so you can manually record, and then you've got volume up and down, which I assume are your gain controls, a power button, and then your main mic up there. The windscreen looks like it just screws right on or just pops right on; the little guy's got a nice little hair to it.
Now then, on your receiver, you have an on-screen display of your two microphones, the levels they're getting, their battery levels. There's a zero there showing your gain level—that's pretty awesome. I like that it shows you that on your receiver. It shows your connection strength and the battery level. You can mute these via the buttons on there. There's a headphone jack for monitoring the audio, as well as a camera out so you can run this straight to your camera. I like that there are two separate ports for that; sometimes there's not. Then also, a lock button if you want to lock it so that you don't accidentally bump things.
So that is the rough rundown of the physical aspects, but ultimately that's not what's important. The important thing is how does it sound. Let's check that out.
Alright, so here we are at my local park on the football/soccer field—whatever we need this week. It's a pretty quiet environment, honestly. There are some fountains in the distance, some kids playing at a playground a little bit that way, but otherwise, other than some cars in the distance, it's pretty quiet right now. What you're hearing is the Ulanzi U-mic directly into the phone. I am running a dual record here, and I'll indicate on screen when I go between the onboard recording on the transmitter and the recording directly into the phone in case there's any difference. Hopefully, there isn't, but just in case.
To get this recording started, literally all I did was plug the USB-C cable into the phone and directly into the receiver. I pulled them out of the case first before plugging it in, then just started rolling. I hit record on here, but otherwise, everything is being controlled directly through the recording on the phone. I didn't have to do anything special. That's what I'm trying to say. There's not a lot of bells and whistles in terms of noise reduction. You've basically got gain controls and a couple of other features that I talked about earlier. In general, there's not a lot of bells and whistles, but hopefully, the audio quality sounds great considering the price point and the basic feature set of having onboard recording. Hopefully, it's going to be a good option. So, that's what I'm testing out.
All that being said, I do want to run it against a couple of mics I've tested in the past. I've got the Hollyland Lark M1 here. The Lark M1 was my budget pick in the past, so we're going to see if this dethrones it or not. Let's run that test now.
This is the Hollyland Lark M1, my previous budget pick. It might still be my budget pick. We're going to figure that out once I hear all the sounds and let you guys know where I'm leaning. In terms of price, you can get the single version or the dual version pretty close to what you can get the Ulanzi for, so that's why I put them in the same bracket. The Ulanzi has onboard recording; this does not. But like I said in the past, good sound for the price, very easy to use. We'll see how the Ulanzi matches up.
All that being said, we've tested in the field. Now let's go back to the studio.
Alright, so after testing out in the field, I've got a couple of thoughts. I'm going to give you the good, the not-so-good, and let you know what I think. First, it's got great sound. I mean, yeah, it's not the best sound on Earth—the shotgun mic in my studio sounds a little bit better—but considering the sound I heard when I was on the field, which was completely untreated (I always do a little bit of treatment in post to my audio), those samples are completely untreated. I'm pretty impressed with the sound this little guy gives. It sounded better than the Hollyland did. Once again, that's the budget Hollyland, so they do have some nicer microphones, but for that price point, this falls right in line with that price point. I think this sounds better. Plus, this has onboard recording, which the Hollyland does not. That's pretty much unheard of at this price point when you're getting two microphones, a charging case, and a receiver with onboard recording. It's not commonly found in that price point.
I did hear some reports that if you let it run for 30 minutes, it makes a new file. I did not test for a full 30 minutes, but what it does is create a second WAV file. A couple of people were saying that you might lose one or two frames of audio when that happens, only on your onboard recording. If you're running your recording into a device like your camera, from my understanding, that should stay consistent all throughout. It's only the new WAV file where you lose literally one to two frames of audio, and you'll just have to do a resync. It's not ideal, but the 30-minute increments for recordings are a pretty common practice, so I wouldn't actually say it's a huge downside, just something to be aware of.
Plus, these are pretty simple to use. The fact that you just plug them in and go—you can do some gain adjustments, but outside of that, there's not a lot you can do. It's a plus and a minus. It's a minus if you want all the extra bells and whistles, but you have to consider the price point. It's a plus when you want to just be able to plug it in and not worry about fixing various settings. Sometimes on higher-end microphones, with so many extra settings, you never know if something gets thrown off and there's extra things you need to check beforehand. Obviously, those make it a little better sounding, but it is nice to just be able to plug these in, check your gain, and go.
Finally, the price point. I got these on sale for, I think I said about 70 bucks, and that is a steal. The normal price is about 100 bucks, but if it's anything like Ulanzi’s other products, these are going to go on sale pretty frequently. You can always get a discount code. I've almost never paid full price for an Ulanzi product because there are always discount codes flying around, whether it's a couple of bucks off or a percentage off. So, considering the retail price of these is about $100, that's pretty insane considering all the other pluses.
First downside is the build quality. They have a little bit of a cheaper plasticky feel. Obviously, they had to cut corners somewhere to hit the price point, and it seems like the plastic they use is the biggest place where they're cutting costs. I mentioned earlier how the case felt a little bit plasticky; that carries over pretty much to the transmitters and receivers. They have a very hollow plasticky feel, almost like if you go to a cell phone store and they don't have real units on the shelves, they've got those little plastic ones that are just to show you what it feels like to hold them. That's kind of what these feel like—just a hollow piece of plastic. Given the choice between sacrificing audio quality and build quality, I would rather sacrifice build quality over audio quality. It's just a matter of how well they are going to hold up. Time will tell.
Next up, they're not as fully featured as some other microphones. Once again, they're cutting costs to hit a certain price point, and one of the other areas they pull back on is extra features. There's no noise reduction on these, which can be very hit or miss. I always prefer to do my noise reduction in post and ideally film in a quiet environment in the first place. Obviously, it's not always possible, and sometimes you can't do noise reduction in post, so it is nice to have as an extra tool. These don't have it.
Next is the kind of bulky case. I usually will have a sling when I'm out on a shoot using my smartphone, so I can throw this into there. But let's say I wanted to go bare-bones and just throw something in my pocket. Unless I'm wearing JNCO jeans, this isn't really going to fit in my pocket too well. It's going to be too big and bulky. Plus, with the cheaper plastic, I'd be worried if I sat down that the whole thing is just going to shatter. So, bulky—not so good.
Finally, and I would say one of the biggest knocks, is there's no controlling of starting and stopping records from the receiver. The only way to start or stop a record is to hit record on the transmitter. Whoever's wearing it has to make sure that they're hitting record in order to get that running. There's no way to see on the receiver if it's recording or not. Literally, the only way to see if it's recording is to look at the little red light on your transmitter to see if it's rolling or not. It would be nice to have that peace of mind, even if it's just a little red dot next to the transmitter on your receiver so that you can see, "Oh, mic one is rolling, I know that one is good to go. Oh, mic two just stopped recording, what's going on?" Just to be able to troubleshoot without having to visually look at the microphone to see if it's rolling.
So that's the good and the bad. But what's my final verdict? Is this my new budget choice for a microphone? Honestly, I think so. The Hollyland in the past was my go-to because you could get the single mic and transmitter for, I think, 60, 65, maybe 70 bucks, and they had a decent sound for the price point. But for just a little bit more, you get two mics, a charging case, and better sound. So honestly, I would say if you are in the market for a budget mic and you can't go above that sales price, stick with the Hollyland. But considering the retail price is only like 10 or 20 bucks cheaper than these, I would say spend the extra 10 or 20 bucks, get the case, get the extra mic, and be good to go with the better audio quality.
All that being said, I know I say it every week but it is true. I like to talk a lot about gear on here, but I also like to talk about techniques. The thing to ultimately remember is gear is just a tool, and it's great to have, but ultimately it's not about the gear; it's about the story.
