Zoom iQ6 Stereo X/Y Microphone for iPhone/iPad for Recording Audio for Music, Interviews, and More,Silver

Cool

Folks, take it from a looooong time musician. Zoom absolutely ROCKS. This thing will give your iPhone video absolutely CLEAN CLEAN audio, especially for stuff out in nature. You can also play with mid-side recordings which allow you to adjust the stereo spread of the audio IN POST (after the fact). I have recorded outdoor video in the forest as well as campfire audio and such and it's just gorgeous audio. Yum!git yerself one.

DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!1. When I opened the package, the plastic microphone case was already broken. But, I was so excited to try it that I ignored it and plugged it in anyway.2. After downloading the proprietary HandyRecording app, I could hear a faint clicking at about 240bpm.3. Unless my iPhone was in airplane mode, I got terrible, random screeching and squealing.4. There is a 25MB limit on emailing files. The only other option to export files is to upload them to SoundCloud. Which means that your files are going to get resampled before you can even edit them!5. According to the advertising and Zoom’s video, there should have been an option to choose between 44.1 and 48Khz. That option is now missing.6. People have been complaining for four years about these issues, and Zoom has done NOTHING to correct them.7. Zoom didn’t even include a storage bag. You can be sure that this microphone, “small enough to fit in your pocket,” is going to get damaged in transit.

I will update this review after this weekend when I get to really test it out.But so far, I like it, with a few qualifiers:The Good:the sound is great. I've had some older Zoom model recorders, and they've generally had great sound. As the mic is the most important part for that, this appears to be no different.This is more convenient than a regular recorder however since you can record with it and immediately email the file out to the cloud or a computer. This outweighs the negatives, which I will now elaborate on.The Bad:1st. The biggest negative IMO is that it's not terribly well designed for attaching onto an iphone 7, or any i-device for that matter. the entirety of the mount is strictly the lighting port itself. given that this is a stress point, i don't know how long this is going to last in the long run. you would think they would have accounted for this somehow but nope. This also means there's no real good way to mount the device in a mic stand or anything.Also, forget having your phone in any kind of a case and attaching this thing. it won't attach tightly enough (if at all) if there's any kind of case around the connection. Poor physical design overall, IMO. The best possible solution would probably be getting an extension cord or something, but then you have the mic head piece just dangling off the end. meh.2nd. The software is problematic. it's not *terrible*, all the basic functions work, BUT it's buggy:For example, i had bluetooth headphones running when i plugged this thing in. recording worked fine, but when it would go back to playback there was silence. it seemed to me that it wanted to play out of the headphone jack attached to the iq6, not the iphone. when i unplugged the iq6 it would ONLY play out of the iphone's speaker, so if i wanted to playback the audio, i'd probably need to either plug in a speaker to the audio jack, or email it to my cloud and play it from there. Overall this is pretty annoying. i guess the alternative is using a conventional recorder which would involve jacking the recorder into my computer, which is far less convenient, but the whole point was to take advantage of the software and i wasn't impressed.so: forget wireless speakers for monitoring. forget *monitoring* unless you plug into the zoom's headphone out jack.

Does NOT fit with Otterbox case. I was disappointed to fid that “fits with most cases” does not include one of the most widely use iPhone case manufacturers. Though not causing me to return the mic, it’s pretty inconvenient and as my phone is in pristine condition due to the great case I’m frustrated Zoom couldn’t have been slightly more thoughtful about the lightning connector. Seems like a poor engineering choice.Having used the mic only twice, the quality appears good. The stereo separation isn’t optimal but expectable at this price point, which was reasonable, making a good mic accessible for me to use for podcasting and capturing sounds/samples for recording and sound sculpting.The interface is straightforward and easy to use. The trim feature works well and I like the option to save as a separate clip-that’s handy.Good mic, great price, seems semi-rugged, but a hassle to use with my phone, 3 stats. Fix the connector and let me swap it out: 5, yup it’s that big a deal for me.

I've used this to record several readings and other spoken pieces, in controlled and uncontrolled spaces with widely varying levels of ambient noise. The sound quality is just magnificent and it connects securely to my phone. Pairing this with a tripod phone stand has given me an instant, portable recording solution I love to use. The audio output absolutely sounds like being in the room with the recorded subject.If I have a caveat, it's that I did not practice sufficiently with the mic and the app before trying to capture meaningful audio. The result was that everything sounded great through my monitor but the gain was set VERY low in the app and thus my audio was very quiet in playback on other devices. That's on me, and so it doesn't affect my rating. Instead, I want to emphasize that this is a great investment, I'm glad I made it, and I wish I had done more experimenting with it first to familiarize myself with the features.

I'm using it with my iPhone 14 Pro Max. It's very portable and records my acoustic grand piano more clearly and more realistic than my other expensive mic. Since Apple switched from lightning to USB C on their iPhones, I hope the USB C version will be available soon.