In the last 2 to 3 years I have dived more and more into photography and recently making shooting more video as well. Not being satisfied by the audio quality when shooting videos with my iPhone has led me to look at options for better audio more closely in the recent past.

“Family media” is how I mostly would describe my use-cases. With that in mind I set out to find a solution. Since I don’t use a Mac anymore for my private needs I was only looking for better external microphones for use with iPhone and iPad.

After searching through a long list of devices available and reading through quite a few articles and usage reports the final set of options was split between devices of two makers: Rode and Zoom.

The Rode iXY is reportedly the best available option. It records 24 bit audio with up to 96 kHz and fits nicely onto the iPhones Lightning Port with additional support for stability. With around 15000 円 It just costs more than twice as the runner-up.

The Zoom iQ6 records 16 bit audio with up to 48 kHz, which seems to be enough for my use-case. The price is around 7000 円, which is reasonable. But that is not the one I bought. The Zoom iQ7, which is basically the same, but has a different microphone design, which allows to point them towards the subject I am pointing at when shooting a video with the phone.

So far I have been quite satisfied with the results the iQ7 gives me. Due to the directed nature of the microphone there is less noice caught from the surroundings and the sound coming from the subject is way much clearer and detailed than the built-in iPhone microphones.