While still best known as a drone company, DJI has long expanded into numerous products that help round out a filmmaker’s toolbox, with cinema cameras, gimbal stabilizers, and action cams being added to their lineup over the years. To start off the year, the company is updating their wireless lapel mic in the form of the DJI Mic 2.
Like its predecessor, the kit contains a pair of wearable transmitters that people can put on their clothing to pick up everything they say, as well as wireless receiver you can plug in directly to cameras and other recording devices. For this iteration, though, it gets better recording quality, longer battery life, support for third-party mics, and a few other convenient features that should make for an overall better mic.
The DJI Mic 2’s transmitters are equipped with a clip, making it easy to attach to your lapel, collar, or various other parts of your clothing, as well as rear magnets, in case you’d rather mount it magnetically somewhere else. Each transmitter is equipped with an omnidirectional mic for picking up everything the wearer says, complete with 32-bit float internal recording to make it competitive with Rode, whose wireless mics from last year came with the capability onboard. That means, it’s going to capture sound a lot better even in complex sound environments, which should give it a step-up in quality compared to its predecessor. The two transmitters can record audio independently or combine them into a single track, giving you versatile options for the recording.
Another new feature on the mic is intelligent noise cancelling, which, the outfit claims, can effectively reduce environmental noise to for clean, uninterrupted audio capture, especially when combined with the included windscreen. In case the transmitter is a tad too big for your liking, you can also use it strictly as a transmitter by plugging in a more discreet mic that won’t be as easily discernible when worn on your lapel.
The DJI Mic 2’s receiver connects directly to your camera via a 3.5mm TRS cable and immediately synchronizes the power states for both, ensuring seamlessly synchronized audio recording, all while being compatible with USB-C and Lighting connections, in case you want to use it with smartphones or other recording devices. It also gets a 3.5mm TRS monitoring port, in case you want to keep tabs on the recorded audio in real-time, while gaining a precision dial for precise control, along with the 1.1-inch OLED touchscreen.
Equipped with better battery life, the new transmitters and receiver can go a full six hours, which is 30 minutes more than the previous generation, all of which can be replenished from the included charging case, which gives it a total of 18 hours of runtime (up from the 15 hours of the original). Other features include 8GB of internal storage on each transmitter (enough to keep an hour of uncompressed 48kHz 24-bit audio), a wireless range of 820 feet, and wireless compatibility with smartphones via Bluetooth connectivity.
The DJI Mic 2 is available now, priced at $349.
