Deity V-Mic D4 Mini Review

The V-Mic D4 Mini from Deity is a compact on-camera microphone that is designed to be an upgrade from the built-in microphone within your camera. The microphone is plug and play and features a super-cardioid polar pattern and shock mount.

Video Review

Deity V-Mic D4 Mini

See Price on Amazon

Design

If you’ve seen an on-camera microphone before, the design of the V-Mic D4 Mini will be familiar to you, it has a tubular design with a metal build which makes it durable for use on the go and, despite being metal, the microphone is also surprisingly lightweight. The light weight is good to see as it not only means that using the microphone won’t add much extra weight to your camera, but it will also sit nicely in the shock mount and not be front-heavy.

The microphone features metal grilles on the front portion to help protect the capsule but ensure that audio can still pass through. The back of the microphone feature’s Deity’s yellow brand colour which I think looks pretty slick with this black and yellow colour scheme that is seen across the microphone and its accessories.

One interesting thing you’ll notice about this microphone is that it not only has an output but also an input – this allows you to not only capture audio with the microphone itself but also with a lav microphone, for example. Using the input doesn’t make the microphone redundant, instead, it records the input audio to the left audio channel and the microphone’s audio to the right audio channel – this will require a bit of processing during editing to ensure that you separate the channels afterwards, but it really is quite a slick way of doing it and offering two isolated audio sources through one input. This is something that I’ve not seen before on other microphones, so it does make Deity’s stand out and have a unique selling point in comparison to the competition.

The microphone sits in a Rycote Lyre shock mount, which is the standard for on-camera microphones – you’ll see a Rycote mount on on-camera microphones from companies such as Rode and Joby, although this one has been tweaked and tailored for the V-Mic D4 Mini. The shock mount sits sturdily, I think this is thanks to the design of the mount as it isn’t just a U shape and instead also makes use of some depth to align the positioning of the microphone with the mount.

The microphone sits on your camera with the cold-shoe mount built into the shock mount but if you don’t want to mount it onto your camera, there are other ways to mount it. The underside of the cold-shoe features a thread for use with a tripod head, or you can take out this adapter thread and mount it directly onto a tripod – the flexibility to mount this microphone on a variety of things is great. The cold shoe also includes some cable management holes to stop the cable from shaking around and causing unintentional noise during recording.

Accessories

Both the input and output are 3.5mm and Deity includes a TRS and TRRS cable in the box so you can use the microphone with a camera or mobile device. The microphone is plug and play, so there’s no charging or batteries to worry about, just plug it into your camera and you’re good to go.

The microphone also includes a fluffy windshield in the box that is well worth using if you plan to use the microphone outdoors and it does a great job at reducing wind noise. It’s nice to see that Deity has included a fluffy windshield with the V-Mic D4 Mini, in comparison to a foam windshield, as this type of windshield is most effective at reducing wind noise and this one specifically is rated in conditions of up to 20mph.

Sound Quality

The microphone features a super-cardioid polar pattern which means that it focuses on the sound that is coming from in front of it, but also a little from behind. This makes the microphone great for vlogging or run-and-gun filming as it means that it’ll be picking up sound from directly in front of it, but also can pick up a bit of narration if you’re behind the camera – although Deity does have a V-Mic D4 Duo that is more designed for this specific use case that I will have a review of in the next few weeks.

This microphone sounds very good for its form factor and price, which is priced at £50, which makes it a worthwhile upgrade if you’re looking to improve the audio quality of your videos. The microphone was able to record my voice clearly in my tests and it also sounded good. During my tests, I had the microphone mounted on top of my camera and held it at an arm’s length away in a “vlogging” position.

I also noticed that there was very little audible white noise from the microphone, which will also help provide a cleaner and higher quality recording. This also checks out with Deity’s “low self-noise” point about the microphone and the microphone also has RF shielding so nearby electronic devices shouldn’t cause any audible interference with the microphone during use.

Like I do say in all my microphone reviews, microphone placement is key to getting a good recording – so try to get your microphone within 30-60 centimetres of your sound source for the best recording quality. If you choose to place the camera across a room, those tripod thread mounts built into the bottom of the microphone shock-mount will certainly come in handy to ensure that your microphone can be placed in a suitable place separately from your camera.

Conclusion

If you’re still using the microphone built into your camera for audio when recording video, the Deity V-Mic D4 Mini is a worthwhile upgrade that includes some handy features. The ability to have a second microphone connected to this one is very nice and the microphone is surprisingly lightweight for its metal build, which lets it be well balanced when on a camera.

The Deity V-Mic D4 Mini is available to purchase on Amazon.