Rode Wireless Pro Review – Worthy Of The "Pro" Title For Wedding Filmmakers
The Rode Wireless Pro is worthy of the pro title for filmmakers and save for a few quirks and how you control it. This compact wireless audio system is a great choice If you film weddings, commercial work or anything else where you need a reliable wireless system with onboard backup recording in the event of signal loss. With the preview of the conclusion of this review out of the way, because I like to save you time. My name is Matt Johnson, and today I’m going to be reviewing the Rode Wireless Pro from the perspective of a wedding
filmmaker. But pretty much all of my conclusions are going to apply to you if you film other videos such as corporate or commercial videos, etc.. So this video should be really helpful to you regardless. Also, for the sake of ethics, I want you to know that Roe did not pay me or sponsor this video, but they did email me out of the blue, Hey, do you want us to send you one of these wireless pros to review? And I said yes, because so many people have been asking me to review these recorders getting right into
it. Then the first thing that you’re going to notice is that from a size and shape perspective, these recorders share a lot of the DNA
been significantly upgraded over the previous generations of this recorder in nearly every aspect. And that’s such a great thing, by the way, because as I said at the start of this video, this is a wireless recorder that I feel like is finally worthy of the pro title. That road has given it a seat in the past with their wireless recorders. It always felt like these were targeted more at consumers rather than pros. And each generation came with their own compromises. with my first gen wireless skill, I felt like it had a pretty limited transmission range.
And if you were filming it with it in a more professional setting, like a wedding film, you couldn’t trust it to not lose signal and ruin your audio. This is a reason that I never really recommended it for pro work. likewise with the second gen wireless go recorder. While I do not have any personal experience with that recorder, I didn’t like that. It didn’t have a locking 3.5 millimeters jack for the microphone. And in addition, soon after launch I heard criticisms about how Rode claimed that it offered internal 32 bit float recording, but in reality
the recording was only 24 bits and you could technically export 32 bit from the recorder using road software, but it was not true. 32 bit float audio and it wasn’t giving you the benefits of 32 bit float. And so as you can see, both of the generations of the wireless echo recorders didn’t feel like they were fully something that I could recommend to professional filmmakers that are making money from the videos they’re creating. Thankfully, the road wireless pro builds upon these previous versions, correcting or working around all of these issues and resulting in a very
powerful wireless system that offers many pro features. Let’s start with the case out of the box. The wireless pro comes in two separate cases, one of which is a charging case that holds the receiver as well as two transmitters and another case which holds all of the recorder accessories, including two laugh mikes with clips as well as magnetic attachments and windscreens. This case has a pretty beefy battery inside that’s capable of recharging the transmitters and receiver two times. And as a plus you can plug the charge case into your computer and use that to copy
any recorded 32 bit flow backup audio that these transmitters recorded, which will help save you time plugging in each of them individually to copy them. Turning our attention to the other case with accessories. Now inside you will find two road lovely or two laugh mikes with clips and locking 3.5 millimeter jacks, which is great, as well as magnetic attachments and multiple windscreen options. quality wise, I really like how these labs sound. But keep in mind that the road wireless pro transmitters also have microphones built in, so you could use them if you wanted to. Personally,
I’m someone that wants to hide the transmission packs, especially if I’m going something like a wedding. So I would always recommend using the laugh mikes. You can hide the transmitters, But in a pinch, if you had to, you could use the built in mic on the transmitter. don’t worry, I have an audio test with examples to show you how both the laugh and the transmitter microphone sound. We’ll get to that in a minute. But I do want to cover one of the cons of these live mikes, and that is the clip that these mikes come
with. I’m someone that really prefers a sturdy microphone clip. And whenever you consider that Rohde did a really great job with the connector of this microphone, it makes it all the more obvious how poor the mic clip is in comparison. In short, this clip is a little bit better than the clip that comes with the stock lav mic for the Zoom F two, But that is hardly a praise because it’s still quite a cheap clip. This is a mix of metal and plastic, but my biggest complaint is that it’s relatively easy for the lav, Mike,
to come loose from the clip. If this gets pulled on really at all, it doesn’t require much force to dislodge the laugh Mike from the clip. And this is a major bummer because then it’s flopping around. Who knows what sort of rustling noise it’s picking up. It’s just not optimal. Compare this clip to my go to recommendation. For years, the stock lab that comes with the test cam d r channel in d r ten L pro and it’s quite a stark difference with no plastic on the test cam D-R tunnels Mike in sight. It’s just
a bummer. And this is one area where the road wireless pro doesn’t quite live up to the pro name in my opinion. Also, while I’m complaining about the clip, I also want to draw your attention to the rather gaudy white road logo on the clip itself. This makes it way more noticeable in videos I highly recommend putting some gaff tape over it. Or maybe using a sharpie. I really hate it. If I had one more nitpick about these accessories, it would be that while the foam when covers are quite compact, the fuzzy wooden covers are
massive and they make the microphone extremely noticeable if you have to use them. I can’t help but wish the road could have made them a little bit smaller or a little bit more discreet. But like I said, I’m really nit picking here. Lastly, for accessories, you also get a variety of connector cables that will enable you to connect the wireless pro receiver to your camera’s 3.5 Mic Jack or an iPhone via the lightning port or an iPhone or Android via the Usb-C port. You have a ton of connection options, which is great. Let’s move on
to the dual transmitters and receiver. Now, as I said, these are very similar in style to the previous road wireless go and in my experience this is one area where they have some quirks. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still good, but they’re they’re quirky. These are compact, they have a nice clip. But when I first use them, I found myself rather confused about what each of the buttons do whenever you press them. Unlike other wireless microphones that I’ve used in the past, neither of the two buttons on the transmitter are labeled, but thankfully two of
the three of them on the receiver are labeled. It just makes things a little confusing. Whenever you’re first setting up this recorder, especially whenever you consider that there’s no instruction manual that comes with it, you have to look it up online, which, hey, I’m all for saving paper, but just make sure that you remember to look at that manual before you show up to a video shoot with these things, because otherwise you might be a little confused about how to use this recorder properly anyways, once you get past the initial confusion that you may have
about the operation of the Road Wireless Pro, it is thankfully pretty simple to use overall, you take the transmitter and receiver out of the case, they immediately power on and pair you screw in a laugh. Mike if you want to use it with the transmitter, plug the receiver into your camera, set your levels and you’re good to go. But that said, if you really want to unlock the full power of these recorders, you need to use the Road Central app, which is available either on your phone or on your computer. Beware, though, unfortunately, the Road
Wireless pro does not have Bluetooth functionality, so you have to either plug the charging case into your computer with the transmitters and receiver inside or connect each of them individually. You can alternatively do this with your phone, but you’ll need to plug a cable into your phone and then into the case to make it work. Once you get past this, the Road Central app is quite useful and it will enable you to select presets for your specific camera as well as most importantly, letting you choose whether you want your transmitters to be constantly backing up
your audio recordings to their internal storage in 32 bit float quality. let me take a minute to explain how this works. The audio recorded to your camera that is transmitted from the receiver that you plug it into is not going to be 32 bit float because I do not know of any cameras at the time of recording this video. The record 32 bit float audio internally. So you are going to be limited to the highest quality audio that your camera supports as a backup, though in the event that the transmitter loses signal with the receiver
or if there’s interference in the signal, etc., The wireless pro transmitters have internal storage that is going to record your footage in higher quality 32 bit float. This will give you much more flexibility in post when editing. So you ideally really want this backup audio because this is what you may prefer using over the audio that you’ve recorded directly into your camera. To get this backup audio to record though, you need to do one of two things. Either you will need to press the unlabeled record button on the transmitter, which will light up the record
light in red to indicate that the transmitter is recording to the 32 bit for backup track. Or you have to put your transmitter and receiver in the charging case, plug that into either your computer or phone and set the backup recording setting to always. first option is a pane because you’re going to need to remember to go over to your transmitter and start and stop the backup recording every single time you want to do that. So I recommend going with the second option and setting the backup according to always, which means that as soon as
you take the transmitter out of the charging case, it’s going to turn on and start recording. And it cannot be stopped by pressing this button on the top of the transmitter. It can only be stopped by turning off the power of the transmitter, which is great because it can help prevent the person you’re filming accidentally turn off the power. By doing this, you’re going to end up with some extra unused audio. But in the event that you lose a wireless signal, your audio will continue recording, which is great. Anyways, the last thing that we need
to talk about in regards to the backup 32 bit float audio track that these transmitters they can record is we need to talk about how much space these transmitters can hold and how you format them. See, unlike other audio recordings you may have use, these transmitters have built in storage. There’s no memory cards that you need to plug into them to copy the audio. In addition, RO does not give a specific number in regards to how many gigabytes of stores that they have, but they do tell you that each transmitter can record approximately 40 hours
of backup audio. And most importantly, this backup audio is recorded as a rolling backup, meaning that once the 40 hours are filled up, the recorder will automatically delete the oldest audio files as you record new ones. Above all, with these backups, you just need to remember to copy these backup 32 bit fluid audio files from your transmitters after you’re done filming, because otherwise if you go out on more shoots and you’ve forgotten to copy them, eventually your audio files will be overwritten, which is a little terrifying. Moving on. I did promise you earlier that we
would talk about the audio quality of these recorders and mikes. So I’m happy to officially reveal to you that I’ve actually been recording all of the audio for this video with the Road Wireless Pro. So if you like how this sounds to the video, I’m working the lab right here, then I think you’re going to be really happy with the quality that you can get from this recorder. I’ve also tested this recorder using the built in microphone that’s on these transmitters. I’ve been holding it right here, but I’ll hold it up about here. So is
where you might be wearing it on someone. And here’s an example for how that sounds. I think it’s decent, but not as good as the laugh Mike that comes with the recorder. And I would really only use this if you’ve forgotten your lav mikes to my ear. Recording with a laugh sounds great, and it sounds on par with other laugh mikes that I’ve used, like the lab that comes with the test cam d r to know, for example. Now, of course, this audio quality wouldn’t matter if the wireless transmission signal wasn’t very strong or had
limited range. And if you remember, that was one of my complaints about the original wireless go. so thankfully, the two things that I want you to keep in mind is that as we talked about earlier, this recorder does or quarterback cup tracks you’re safe even if the wireless transmission drops out. And more importantly, the range of this recorder is good. And in my testing, walking throughout my house, there were four walls between me and the recorder. It still transmitted great quality audio. And then whenever I tested it with less obstructions, I was able to get
several hundred feet away before I started to notice any signal loss. So I think that if you’re planning on using this recorded to film weddings or other videos where you find yourself quite a distance away from the person you’re recording, especially, let’s say if you’re filming them in a very large church where they’re at the front of the church and you’re stuck way back in the balcony, you should still be able to get high quality wireless audio of them speaking, which is great. Next, let’s talk battery life, because these are quite small transmitters and receivers
after all. So what sort of battery life can you expect from them? Road claims you’ll get about 7 hours of recording time. And whenever I tested these at a wedding, I found that I was getting approximately that amount, maybe a bit shorter. The thing that you need to keep in mind is that if you are someone that likes to put a microphone on, someone and leave it on them throughout the day, maybe you’re filming a long term documentary or you’re filming a wedding. Do you want to have audio from your couple throughout the day? This
is one area where the Road wireless probe may not be the best choice. It offers better battery life in some of its wirelessly transmitting competition, like DJI has wireless mikes system that gives you approximately 5 hours of recording time. But whenever you compare the road wireless, go to standalone recorders that do not transmit wirelessly like the new test cam tr ten l Pro When I tested that recorder, it lasted for over 28 hours. You don’t get wireless audio, but you can put that on someone in the morning and know that it will be still recording
on them. At the end of the day, the main thing that you need to keep in mind is that because the Road wireless pro does not have swappable batteries, you’ll have to put the transmitters and receiver back into their charging case to recharge them. And Road says this can take about two and a half hours to fully recharge. I know it’s a contentious topic, but I’m actually a fan of using triple-A and Double-A batteries with my audio equipment because in the event that I’m filming something like a wedding and my batteries die, I don’t have
the option of stopping the wedding to recharge my gear. Can you? I’ll just hold on the ceremony for an hour. I got to recharge my wireless transmitter. No, I don’t have that option. I need batteries that are fully charged and ready to go. So I don’t think that the battery life of the road wireless pro is a deal breaker. I just want you to be very aware of what you’re getting. And if you’re someone that records for longer than six or 7 hours at a time, you might want to look into something else. Speaking of
looking at something else, we need to move on and talk about TimeCode with the road wireless pro because yes the wireless pro features timecode support and actually gives you quite a few options for how to set it up to start Road has tried to make this as easy as possible by giving you guides on their website where you can simply select the camera that you’re using and see all of the different ways that you can use. TimeCode from the wireless pro with your camera. It’s really great in their text and video guides, which I love
to see. in short you can set up the wireless process in TimeCode over its 3.5 millimeters audio Jack or USB with the most popular option being the mode where the audio from the transmitter is sent to the left channel of your recorder while the timecode signal is sent through the right channel which you can then use to sync up all of your audio and video in post. You have other options too, if you want to use headphones or if your camera has a dedicated timecode input, you can use that as well and embed the timecode
directly into your video files for even easier sinking. The main thing that you need to keep in mind when it comes to TimeCode with the road wireless pro is that you cannot jam timecode from another device into the road so you could not say have a tentacle sync device or a D timecode device jamming timecode into the road wireless pro but that said you can jam from the road wireless pro to another device. So if you wanted to build out an ecosystem of TimeCode devices and use the road wireless pro with them you should be
able to jam from the road to them and it should ideally work. But I have not personally tested this yet. so that means if you are a wedding filmmaker for example, and you were filming a ceremony with multiple cameras and you want to sync all of them up with TimeCode It should be possible, but it may take a bit of work. So looking at the road Wireless pro as a whole, as I said at the start of this video, it does feel like a significantly more pro focused device than any of their previous wireless recorders
like the road wireless go road has looked at many of the features that pros are asking for, included them in this recorder. And overall, I feel like they’ve succeeded in creating a very versatile and capable wireless audio system that should work great for you if you’re filming weddings or documentaries or commercial work, etc.. main thing I would keep in mind is that this recorder, like all recorders, is not without its quirks. And if you can get past the learning curve for the buttons, you’re okay with sometimes having to plug the recorder in to change some
of the settings. And you do not need to record for longer than 6 to 7 hours at a time, plus the time needed to recharge the transmitters and receiver. I think that wrote is offering a really compelling option for filmmakers with this recorder. personally. I’m someone that has found myself recording audio for longer and longer times on a wedding day, and I found myself moving toward putting mikes on the couple and leaving them on throughout the day to record genuine moments. So for me, I’m going to be sticking with recordings that offer longer battery life.
But if you don’t need that and you’re just putting mics on your couple during the ceremony and maybe for some letter reading, or if you’re filming interviews and you’re just like honestly down for an hour or two, I think the Road Wireless Pro is a fantastic choice. You know, it’s also a fantastic choice. Downloading my gear Guide for wedding Filmmakers. That’s right. If you’re a wedding filmmaker, honestly, you feel anything and you’re wondering the exact gear that I recommend to use. You need to check out this gear guide because it breaks everything down into categories
and shows you exactly what you should buy with links, which is going to save you a ton of time. Did I mention the guide is free? It’s completely free. You can download it at the link down in the video description. Also in the description I will link to my color presets which are not free, but they are going to help you get amazing colors in your videos no matter the camera that you’re using or whether you film in a log or non log picture profile. I would love for you to check them out as well.
They’re linked down below to Thanks so much for watching. Subscribe. If you want to see more videos about audio gear and have a great day. But let’s say that you’re like me and you don’t want to leave tons of old backup audio files on your transmitters because you don’t have to sift through all of your old audio recordings to find your most recent ones. Instead, you’d like to start every project with a blank slate and format your memory cards for all of your cameras and recorders before you start recording. Well, here’s where it gets tricky,
because these recorders don’t have a screen. Well, here’s where it gets tricky, because these transmitters don’t have a screen and the receiver has a screen, but it’s rather limited on its controls. So if you want to format the memory of your transmitters, you’re going to need to, you guessed it, put your transmitters and receiver in the charging case, plug that into your computer, open up the road Central app and then mass delete your previously recorded audio there. So if I do some of this up in regards to the backup track, I’m really glad that these
recorders have it, but it is a bit quirky and it takes me back to my review of the Zoom F two, which required you to format the memory card in the recorder. But to do that you had to use a computer app because whenever that recorder first came out, it didn’t even have the ability to format because whenever that recorder first came out, it didn’t even have the ability to format your memory cards using the iPhone app. And even now, if you don’t have the Bluetooth version of that recorder, you still have to use the
computer app to format your memory cards. It’s just a pain. I guess what I’m mainly saying is that I would take these transmitters or receiver being a bit larger if they had easier to use controls on them. Why? I would also accept road making a Bluetooth app and putting Bluetooth in these transmitters and receiver so I could wirelessly format the memory, access all of the settings and confirm that everything’s working before I go out and use them. That would make me feel just a little bit better as a pro.
