AnkerWork M650 Review

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, Bodie here. Before we get to this episode's topic, I do want to let you know that Rob and I are going to be talking about the AnkerWork M650 microphones. These are the microphones that I use to record my interviews at CES. They're lavalier mics or wireless mics that connect to your phone or a computer or you can record directly onto the device itself.

[00:00:26] I know Rob and I talk about this a little bit at the beginning, but I felt like it needed to be explained a little bit more. Now, while we are talking about the AnkerWork M650s, I am talking on my Heil microphone, but in the middle, I'm going to break in and give you an example of what it sounds like when I'm talking just in general, just myself. And then I will give you an example of an interview that I did while I was at CES to help give you a better understanding of what this device can do.

[00:00:55] All right, everybody. Enjoy the show. And FYI, the best way to consume this episode is probably through YouTube because I'm going to show some things on video. Welcome to another episode of Beyond the Post. I'm Rob Dunwood. And I'm Bodie Grimm.

[00:01:18] And in this episode, we're going to be talking about tech and just some of the cool tools that Bodie and I use to make all the magic happen when it comes to producing shows and creating content and all that kind of good stuff. So, Bodie, I know you have put some real time into this episode as far as doing some legitimate and real reviews of actual products. So, what do you have? What are you going to kick us off with for this episode?

[00:01:47] Well, on this episode, we're going to talk about the Anchorwork M650, which are these guys right here if you're watching on video. Oops, upside down. And these are little lavalier mics. I've not heard of those ones, so I'm thinking that they're something similar to like the Rode Wireless Go or the DGI mics or even something like the Hollyland mics. Is that what we're talking about?

[00:02:13] A couple of wireless mics and a transmitter that you can hook up to your phone or to a camera or something like that? Absolutely. So, you can use these for interviews, which is what I was planning on using them for. At work, we had a little video that we made to show leadership at the city that I work for. So, we used our mics or my mics to record everybody. So, we made sure to get good quality sound.

[00:02:41] We didn't get that echoey distant sound that you would get when you're recording from your phone or a digital camera. Okie doke. Now, I'm on the Anchorwork M650 microphone right now. I'm in a pretty decent treated room, so there's not a lot of echo in here. But I'm going to play you a clip of an interview that I did while I was at CES in a fairly, it was like a medium-sized ballroom. But there was quite a bit of people in there.

[00:03:10] And you can hear that there's a lot of background noise and a lot of background chatter. So, you'll be able to hear the interview that I did. Now, how I did this interview was I had one of the lavalier mics attached to the interview subject. And then I bought this mic handle off of Amazon. And basically, it allowed me to drop the other lavalier mic into the mic handle and add a little wooden sock on it. So, it looked just like a microphone.

[00:03:37] And then I was able to, when it was my turn to talk, I would point the mic to my mouth, basically. And I would ask my question. And then when it was the guest's turn to talk, I would point the microphone towards the guest. So, the guest was being picked up by two different microphones. Just in case something happened, I could record my side because I knew what my questions were. And it was really important for me to capture whatever it was that the guest was saying. So, let's go ahead and listen to that clip.

[00:04:06] All right. I'm here with Ben Parker of Lightship RV. Ben, what is Lightship RV? Well, Bodie, we're America's first electric RV manufacturer. We are a ground-up, you know, based and built in America travel trailer builder. We build what we think is the perfect travel trailer for, you know, this new age that we're entering, the electric age.

[00:04:35] Our first product we call AE-1. All right. Now that you have an idea of what these mics are capable of, let's go ahead and rejoin our conversation with Rob. I think that maybe some of our listeners, they may be aware of, like, what Rode has out, what DGA has. Those are probably some of the popular ones. The Hollyland are pretty popular as well. They came out, the Hollyland Lark M2s that came out earlier in 2024. I think it was, like, January of 2024.

[00:05:04] So, where would you put the anchor as far as are they towards the high end like those Rode, or are they towards the middle of the line more like the Hollyland as far as pricing and feature functionality? So, as far as features, I'm going to put them at the top. I've not used the Rode or the DJI mics, but I have seen them. And I'm going to put them at the top just because there is a lot of technology in these microphones.

[00:05:33] And you can get them for $199, or occasionally you can get them for $89. And for $89, you're getting an amazing deal. You get two Lavalier mics. You get a receiver. You get a whole bunch of stuff in the box. So, I'm putting this very high end. Like, I was so surprised. When I started doing the review, I was like, man, I did not realize this little product did so much. And we'll obviously get into that. I don't want to jump ahead.

[00:06:02] What do you like about them? We'll start off with the price. Sometimes they're just on sale for $89. These come in white and they come in black. And I've bought three sets of these in the last year. I bought a set for my oldest for Christmas last year. I bought a set for my little brother. And I bought a set for myself. And if you go to Amazon.com and you search the Anchorwork M650,

[00:06:29] you might find that the black ones are $199. And then if you click on the white ones, they might be $89 or vice versa. My first question, do they offer 32-bit wireless float? Oh, that's a good question. I have no idea.

[00:06:50] One of the things that I like about when I put them into the higher end category is that you basically get lossless audio recording. So you don't have to worry about your levels. You can literally fix everything in post. Now, if you understand what clipping is and you just look at your levels, you don't necessarily need that.

[00:07:13] But that is a nice feature that I see on some of the higher end wireless lavalier mics that generally cost even $100 or so more than what these cost. So I just wasn't sure if they had that or not. I don't know. But they do have a similar feature. Let me get to what's in the box and then we'll kind of go into that. Because they do have what's called a safe mode feature, which I think is pretty cool and I think you'll like. But let's start off with what's in the box.

[00:07:43] Because there's a lot. There's a lot that comes in the box. You get a USB-C cable, which is right here. You get a little audio jack so you can connect it to your DSLR or if you have an old iPhone or an old Android phone. You get a little windsock. That's pretty cool. And then you get these little covers for the lavalier mics. And these covers, I should have taken these out.

[00:08:11] These covers can be different colors. So you can actually match them to people's clothes if you don't want them to show up. Or if you want them to be kind of like a representative of who's on which mic and you have somebody there monitoring sound, they can look and see, oh, that's orange. That's Rob. Or this one's blue. This one's Bodhi or whatever. So you can use them for different reasons. So that's what comes in the box.

[00:08:40] And then we have the case right here. And this case is just like the Samsung AirBuds and the AirPods and stuff. It is a charging case. And then inside here, you can see this started opening up. The receiver is turned on as soon as I opened it up. And you can see the little blue light here. The lavalier mics, which are on the left and the right here, those turned on as soon as I opened this thing up. Pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:09] So it charges them. And I've only charged this thing once since I've had it. And I've had it since October. But you can see as I'm talking, Rob, let me pull this back here. Can you see that? You can see that the lavalier mics are sitting inside the case, but they're already picking up audio. So that's a really nice feature. You don't have to, like my Hollyland that I was using, which I think were the first version of the Lark.

[00:09:36] I was, I had to pair them and that could be difficult. And on the CES show floor, it doesn't, it didn't always go so well. There was some time for troubleshooting. So these are paired automatically. And then you have the lavalier mics themselves. And if you look here, there's a blue light. If you click the button, it turns to red. So that's mute or not. The microphone is this little metal piece right here.

[00:10:05] And then when you want to clip it on somebody, it's got this magnetic clip or it's got an alligator clip. And it just clips right on. Yeah, it's very satisfying. So those are the mics. And then this piece here is that decorative piece that you can pull off and change out if you want. And it also has a USB-C connector that you hook to the bottom of that receiver. And it's got a lightning connector that you can hook to the bottom of the receiver.

[00:10:34] And that's everything in the box. Now, what is your audio quality? I mean, how good do they sound? Now, I know we're using, you know, studio production, you know, quality style mics right now to do this podcast. So I'm not expecting that they're going to sound like, you know, like your Heil or like my, like my, you know, Shure MV7 right here. But how do they sound as far? Because those are relatively small devices.

[00:11:03] So just, you know, what kind of sound quality are you getting? The audio quality is fantastic. As a matter of fact, there are times that I was just shocked by how good the quality was based on what was going on in the room at the time we were recording. So, yeah, really good stuff. So, Bodhi, you don't strike me as a microphone snob at all.

[00:11:28] So I'm just going to ask you this question because a lot of people say, particularly if you are just getting started out, just use your phone. Just use your iPhone. The microphone, your iPhone is going to be fine. What do you say to that for people who are trying to create content, whether it be audio only, audio first, video, whatever the case? What do you say to just use your phone? For, you know, $89 if you can get these at that price or one of those other Hollyland brands.

[00:11:58] And I think DJI sells one lavalier mic at a pretty reasonable price. You know, absolutely up your game. But you should 100% be practicing before you get to that point. So, yeah, I don't want, you know, perfect is the enemy of the good, right, Rob? Like, I don't want somebody to be on paralysis because they're waiting for good audio. You can absolutely start doing that with your phone.

[00:12:28] But if you want to up your game and you want to sound professional, then get something like the Anker M650s. Okay. I am like you. I'm very careful in the way that I talk about equipment because, as you said, I wouldn't want someone who is interested in being a creator that's ready to start today with their iPhone or with their Android device and they don't have any additional equipment.

[00:12:55] But then they hear, you know, a knucklehead like me say, well, you need to have a really good mic before you even attempt to create, you know, anything that has sound in it. Because that is not the case. I would much rather you use what you have until you can afford to get what you need. But I will say this, that even if you're creating video, half of video, 50% of video is audio. So before you start thinking about, I want to upgrade and get a better camera.

[00:13:24] Before you start thinking about, I need to get new lights and all that, all those kinds of things, all those other accessories. The first thing you're going to want to do is get yourself a decent microphone. Because literally the $12 lavalier wired microphone that you can get for, you know, off of Amazon to plug into your iPhone will sound better than the built-in microphone on your iPhone. Because it's designed to actually capture a higher quality of audio. So I'll just say it like that.

[00:13:54] I'm a little bit more snobbish, but I'm like you, Bodie. I don't want anyone who's listening to us to hold off on their journey into being a creator because they don't have an $80 microphone that's going to make them sound awesome. You know, if you are one of those folks that's just like, I'm just going to start today. You can set up your room to kind of alleviate echo. You want to stand somewhat close to your phone so that you're not, you know, you don't have that distance.

[00:14:23] Because, you know, with these lavalier mics, you can walk, it's like 650 feet away or 200 meters away. And plenty of YouTubers have tested this and they still work fine. It still sounds like you're right up next to the mic. But if you're on one end of the hallway and you're talking, you know, on the other end of the hallway of your microphone, it's not going to be very good audio. So there are things that you can still do with your phone to set yourself up for success. Okay.

[00:14:51] So, Rob, I just have a quick thing with the receiver itself because this thing does a lot of stuff. And I'm not sure this is the greatest demo online because on video here. But if you slide down, you get different options. You slide up or you slide down, you get different options. So the screen's locked. You unlock that. So you get noise reduction and you get soundtrack so that you can with soundtrack, it's either mono or stereo.

[00:15:18] With noise reduction, it compresses your voice a little bit. I've actually found that I will take my audio that I get from this and I'll use plugins like Acorn Digital's DeVerberate or Crumple Pops Echo Remover or DeNoise. I will use those apps to remove the noise. I don't do it on here. I don't think it does a very good job.

[00:15:46] I think it makes your voice sound way more compressed and worse. But if you slide from the bottom, you see there's the mute button right here. And then there's a record button. And it will record. You can record to your iPhone or your laptop, but it will actually record to the device itself. And when it records to the device itself, you get the left channel and the right channel going into you get both of those recordings.

[00:16:15] And how you get those recordings off the device is you put everything back in the case and you plug the case into your laptop and it will show up on your laptop as two different devices. But they're both M650. One will be from one level or mic and the other one will be for the other one. So you get you get good quality sound delivered directly to the device. So that's really good if you want to have a backup, which you should have.

[00:16:42] But that's just that's just really good. It's just a really good just in general. You know, I don't know what you're recording into, but if you're recording into some apps, all you're getting is, you know, like an MP3 or some sort of compressed file. This way you're getting an actual WAV file. So you're getting really good audio coming in. The better the audio, the better. So that sounds like a like, you know, a heck of a feature on this device. Yeah.

[00:17:11] And the other thing that it does, Rob, is if you put it into safe mode now, safe mode to you and me probably means something very different than the folks that designed this. But if you put this into safe mode, what happens is it makes a separate recording at six dBs less than the original sound source.

[00:17:30] So if it gets loud or if somebody's too hot, it makes a backup recording of each lavalier mic six dBs less so that you have choice. You have options when you go back and edit something.

[00:17:47] So it sounds like if you, you know, what you're saying is that in times where you may be clipping in your audio, where you're peaking, the audio level is just too much for the microphone to handle. That a way that it is getting around that is by, in addition to the audio track that is clipping, it creates a completely separate audio track six dB lower, which should be a low the clip.

[00:18:13] So you would have an option to use, you know, you know, one of two different tracks, one where you may not have clipping, even though it's a lower level. And the reason that's important is because you can always boost audio, but you can't always denoise something that's already clipping. Yeah. And the other thing that's really good about that is that this is a little bit of a spray and pray kind of a situation.

[00:18:39] If you are out and about, like when we go to CES, if you're out and about and you're doing interviews, you can't always monitor what the audio is. I mean, you want to set it up as best as possible, but you're not, you don't necessarily, or I won't, because I don't have a budget like that. I'm not going to have a sound person behind me monitoring levels and making sure everything's okay. So I'm going to set this up. I'm going to put it in safe mode.

[00:19:04] I'm going to record and I'm going to, that's going to allow me to have some peace of mind that I'm going to get some good audio for the interview that I'm doing. Let's see. I think I mentioned everything. Um, I'm going to give you some downsides here. If you are recording and trying to monitor with like AirPods, I get a lot of like popping and a lot of artifact that isn't on the recording.

[00:19:30] There's just something when it's, when it's delivering the audio to you through the Bluetooth headphones, that's not a good way to go. So I got a cheap player of wired headphones. These things cost $10 and that's just fine. The other thing is collared shirts can be an issue because, or a coat like you have on today that's collared. Um, sometimes the audio will drop out a little bit.

[00:19:55] So, uh, that's something that I'm going to have to solve for as we head into CES. And I think I have a plan for that, but we'll talk about that at a later time. I think they're worth $200, but if you can get them for 89, uh, they are a steal at $89. Not bad. Good review, man. Good review.

[00:20:13] Um, when we get together, we can compare the anchor works with the Hollyland Lark M2, uh, that, uh, like I said, I think they're in a, you know, around the same class of, of hardware. So we can just do a little bit of comparison because I love, I love those things. We're not going to review that today, but we can do a comparison when we get to CES. Yeah.

[00:20:38] And you know, the, the, this goes back to, and we talk about this a lot, Rob is the device that works best for your workflow. Like maybe these won't work for you. Maybe the Hollyland Lark M2s works, but I, I, I still have the M1s, uh, and they still work fine. Um, it's, it's kind of a matter of what was going to work best for you and your workflow. Absolutely. All right. Rob.

[00:21:07] Well, uh, I think that's it for us on this particular episode. I want to thank everybody for sticking with us. Season three is going really well. We are probably going to release it mid January. So looking forward to getting that out to everybody and hearing everybody's feedback. Is there anything else I missed? I don't think so, man. Good, good review of the, the, uh, let's give us the full name.

[00:21:36] So folks who are listening, they can actually go out and find them. The anchor works. I think there's more than just that to it. Yeah. That's the ink work M six 50. Okay. Anchor work M six 50 wireless lavalier microphone. Absolutely. And anchor. People know them for generally for their chargers and their battery. Probably their battery banks is what they're most known for. They make good hardware. They make really good hardware. So I would imagine that these have the quality that anything else anchor you would probably get.

[00:22:07] All right, folks. Till we meet next time.