New mic from Rode

They pioneered the small, lightweight on-camera shotgun microphone with the VideoMic and VideoMic Pro but now Rode have brought out another one.

The “Videomic GO” is a more straightforward product than its older siblings and is aimed at the user who just wants to plug and play. It has no audio filters and level adjustment settings but simply plugs into your camera via a standard 3.5mm jack.

It weighs a featherlight 73 grams and should be compatible with most ‘point & shoot’ and GoPro cameras as well as DSLRs and consumer camcorders provided they can provide 2.5V of “plug in power” (Canon camcorder users take note – some models, eg Legria HF-G25, provide no such power and would presumably not work with this mic)

Tech specs include a signal-to-noise ratio of 60dB, a dynamic range of 96dB and a max handling level of 120dB.

It should do a much better job of capturing ambient sound than any inbuilt mic. Rode claim it’s suitable for dialogue too and we agree it’ll beat an onboard mic but mics only work well for the spoken word if the subject is no more than a couple of feet away and you’re unlike to film anyone that close. So you’ll amost certainly still be better off micing a presenter or interviewee with a tieclip mic or a shotgun held up close rather than on-camera.

The mic features Rycote’s neat “Lyre” suspension mount to isolate it from handling noise. More info at www.rodemic.com/videomicgo

Here’s our First Look and initial tests video: