Maono PD200W Hybrid Microphone Review

In this video, we look at the Maono PD200W Hybrid microphone, an XLR/USB microphone that also GOES WIRELESS! We do a complete overview of the microphone and put it through its paces as a wireless dynamic microphone, discussing all that you are freed up to do as a result.

Transcript

You know, we've showcased a lot of microphones on this channel. A lot of really good dynamic microphones, a lot of really good wireless microphones. What if we brought those two worlds together?

Hey everybody, welcome to the channel. I am Joe, and today we are reviewing the Mayano PD200W wireless dynamic microphone. And yeah, that's a mouthful, but we're going to find out if it's worth it.

In the box, you get the PD200W wireless microphone with built-in shock mount, the wireless receiver, a desk stand, a USBC to USB cable with USBC to USBA adapter, and the documentation.

Now, when you look at the microphone, let's look at the back first.

A Closer Look At The PD200W

You will see that it is a hybrid microphone. It does XLR and USB connectivity, but is also a wireless microphone. It's got a 3.5 mm jack for headphones for low latency monitoring.

And you got the power button on the microphone, which also acts as LED controls when it's on. And the LEDs I'm talking about are the rings that go around your volume control in the top, as well as right around the capsule, which happens to be right next to one of the softest and just, for lack of a better term, luscious windscreens I have ever laid my hands on.

On the top, as I said, you have your volume controls for your microphone and headphones. You just have to click on the button to switch between the two, and you've got your mute button.

The stand itself is nice. The base is really heavy and has great rubber footing on the bottom. The knob on the side allows you to adjust the height of the stand by a few inches, which I'm told is more than enough. And on the shock mount, you've got a knob that lets you adjust the tilt 90 degrees in either direction.

So, that's the overview of the mic, but I'm really excited to get this thing up and running. So, let's take a look.

Hearing The Mic

Okay, so we're all set up with the Mayano PD200W in front of my face. Now, it is on the stand right now, which is actually a nice stand because it can come up and be up at your level and not be so far away.

It can be higher too if you're a taller, gentle person. But just because of the way my setup is, there isn't a good spot for me to have it all the time on my desk like this, which is why I always recommend if you are going to have a mic in your setup, have it in an arm so you can have it nice and close to your face and then not be a disruption to the rest of your setup.

But because this microphone is wireless, it's affording me an opportunity to do something I can't really do with any other microphone.

Pick it up.

So, I can just sit like this and have a good time with it. If I'm doing something on my phone or whatever, I can just have this set up any way I want, and I can just have some fun with it.

One of the interesting things about this microphone is its wireless receiver because it's the same receiver you've seen on the Mayano T5 wireless microphone kit, which, if you watch this video right here, you'll see that. And because this is the PD200 series, we've actually done a video for the PD200X.

So, you can see that video over there if you just want to see what this microphone is as a hybrid USB XLR microphone.

So, really all we're going to test on this is its wireless capabilities because this microphone already exists in a non-wireless format. So, the only thing that makes this a worthwhile purchase over that is whether or not the wireless is any good.

So, the first thing I want to do is something we haven't done for quite some time in the microphone world, is the test with some of our famous phrases. So, let's go ahead and hear how this thing sounds.

The small pup gnawed a hole in the sock. The fish twisted and turned on the bent hook. Press the pants and sew a button on the vest. The swan dive was far short of perfect. The beauty of the view stunned the young boy.

All right, so I want to give that a listen just to get some impressions on the microphone, and then we're going to get into a little bit of processing and using a little bit of its software.

Mic Test / Impressions

Okay, so the sound of the microphone was overall decent. Really good noise reduction. I didn't apply any noise reduction in OBS or anything like that as I recorded this. That was all this out of the box, so that was impressive.

The only thing that really got me were the plosives.

Now, a dynamic microphone you should have close to your mouth to talk, so I don't think I was holding it too close to be able to talk to. But from where we are now, I've upped the gain a little bit, and it's now, I don't know, maybe about like eight inches from my face.

But if you do want to hold it like I was holding it, maybe just have it a little off to the side. Don't talk directly into it. You can get around that.

But what I want to do now is have a look at the microphone in the Mayano Link software and see what we can play around with.

Controlling The Mic Via The Maono Link App

And now we've got the Mayano Link up and running. Now, I've used the software before, so I know that it's decent for what it is. But when you download software and they don't spell the name of the microphone correctly, so wireless was spelled wrong on more than one microphone, that is something for a concern.

So, my friends at Mayano, maybe have a look at that because you didn't do it wrong every time. You can notice this one.

But let's have a look at the software right here. So, it recognizes the PD200W, and it gives you the levels right here, and you can choose to mute it and then unmute it right directly from the software.

Down here, you can do recordings. So, what this would do is give you a little recording of what you've got set up here, and you could play it back for testing and things like that.

Up top again, you'll see the name, but you'll also see the battery life here. So, that's good to have handy somewhere so you know whether or not you're going to need to plug in the microphone.

It's got your gain setup as well, and it's actually really interesting the way they set this up. It's based on how far away you're going to be from the microphone in centimeters, so that you know roughly where the gain needs to be depending on how far this is away from your face.

Your headphone volume is here. If you've got this plugged in, you can mess around with that.

And then you have your noise cancellation. Now, the noise cancellation was already on. I think that that is just kind of a native function of what it's doing, but you can go pretty heavy.

So, this is what it is on slight. And keep in mind that I'm in a room with some ambience. I'm right next to a computer that's humming along, and this is what the silence is. It's like nothing, right?

So, if we go into the more heavy noise cancellations, we know in this room it's going to remove everything because it's already doing that. But I want to hear how it impacts my voice.

So, I'm going to go to the moderate, and we'll do a little bit of talking here, and we can see how that is. Let me know down in the comments how this is sounding to you. If it's sounding bad, because I don't want to keep going back and forth and listening and coming back and saying, "Well, this is what it sounded like to me."

I'll put my findings down in the comments, and then you can go down there and decide whether or not you agree with me.

And then this is the aggressive. I like that it's called aggressive. We are aggressively removing the noise in your room. But I am the noise in my room, so hopefully you can still hear me.

Going back to slight because we know that we were happy with that.

You've got now the monitor output. So, how you want to actually hear yourself. So, you can decide you want to listen to yourself through the computer, or you can decide you want to listen to yourself through the microphone itself.

Now, right now they're both turned on, so I'm assuming that means they both work. But there is a guide here on how to use it. It's going to open up in a browser for you, so you won't have any problems.

Okay, so we've only looked at the basics area, and this looks very much like Amazon basics, and I don't care for that very much, but it's their color scheme, so what are you going to do?

So, we're going to move over to scenes and see what that looks like.

So, now we've got a little bit of stuff here. So, the first thing we have is a nice little EQ.

And then we've got some scenes that are set up. So, if we set up a podcast, now this is what podcast sounds like. So, it's done some things. It's dropped out some of the muddy middle stuff. It's dropped this area, which is going to be more of your sibilance, and it's brought up the bass just a teeny tiny bit.

So, that's an interesting little look, and it's actually one of the more thought-out EQs in terms of actually setting up a preset. Usually, it's just kind of a smile and that's good enough, or it just boosts one bit and leaves the rest, or boosts the other bit and leaves the rest.

Let's see what it looks like under game. Now, it's actually really interesting. I don't know who exactly would have such a drop-off in the high frequencies and the low frequencies and just a big boost on the mids. That's not really for me to say, but it's very much for you to hear right now.

And then we're going to set up the sing. And this isn't exactly what I expected to see either. So, we've got the low pass filter on, which is dropping off all of your bass and only a very slight raise in the high frequencies, which is really where you want to have a lot of your singing. That's that presence.

So, curious how this sounds to you. I'm not going to sing for you if that's what you were looking for, but sorry to disappoint, but not at all sorry.

And then what's really interesting is underneath that scene, you have different versions of the same preset. So again, that was this. This is now our folk preset, and we just had the pop one.

If we go back to podcast for a second, we've got two podcast ones as well, and you can see how that goes. So, this brings down some of the high frequency stuff too, which is kind of surprising to me, but it is what it is.

And we're just going to go back to original because we know we can do whatever we want with this. I just want you to hear the flat right now.

Now, if we go into the lights, this is obviously going to be the onboard light controls for these kind of things. So, you can create custom color libraries. You can select your color here, like so. You can decide whether or not it's a locked color, if it's breathing, or if it's in a loop.

So, in the loop, it does that kind of rainbow thing, which is fun, but I like the fixed.

And then it gives you a brightness. So, too bright and it really washes out and everything looks kind of light. So, they were actually right to default this at a darker level, but that is ultimately it for the software.

It's not as robust a software as you're going to find with something like Beacon or something like Elgato, but these mics are ultimately meant to be a little bit more plug-and-play. So, just to have something to make little tweaks like this is a nice addition.

But I'm going to tell you, I'm kind of sick of sitting on my computer right now. I want to sit somewhere else.

Connecting The PD200W To My Phone

So, let's take this mic on the move. So, I've decided to bring you into my bedroom. And no, I'm not going to give you a tour, pervert.

But I wanted to bring you in here because there's a different sound profile in here. There's a lot more in terms of bare walls in here, so I'll get a little bit more echo. And then I've got more fans going in here. Not the one behind me, I turned that off because that would have been impossible for anybody to go past.

But this is what's cool is now it's just plugged into the phone, and I'm just holding on to it right here.

But I could set this up, and the receiver can actually take two microphones. So, I'm assuming that you can connect two of these at the same time. So, you could have a wireless podcast setup.

Say you were just staying in a hotel and you wanted to get the thing recorded, you could do that really easily. Even for an audio-only podcast, you can just have this plugged in and capture it that way.

Now, you might not want to be right next to an air conditioner when you do that, but the fact that the option is there is really, really cool.

Pricing, Kits and Conclusions

Now, the Mayo PD200W retails for $129.99, which I think is a fantastic price for the microphone. But I'm reshooting some stuff right now because I'm actually back from a cruise, and it's on sale right now as of this launch for $84.99.

That is cheaper than pretty much any other dynamic microphone you can get that's of any notability. Add to that the fact that this is a hybrid microphone. Add to that the fact that this is a wireless microphone, and this is a fantastic deal for this mic.

You can also see there's other kits here. So, you have the boom arm. You actually have a two microphone kit, which is a really great thing, especially if you're coming into Christmas and you know somebody who's trying to start a podcast. You can basically get them set up right here.

And I'm going to tell you, when I started my podcast with much lesser equipment, I spent a lot more than $239.

So, if you like this video, check out what they have on offer. See what might work out for you and save a lot of money right now.

And I should disclaim, this is not an ad. Mayano has not paid me to say any of this. Mayano has not paid me to advertise this. This is just strictly a review.

But I do think that this is a worthwhile microphone. Is it the best dynamic microphone on the market? No, not by any means. We've gone through a lot of monsters on this.

But is it a small drop-off in quality for a huge drop-off in price? Yes. And that's what you should be thinking of, especially if you're just getting your foot in the door with this stuff.

Again, yes, I own Shure microphones, but I've been doing this for a long time now. If you are getting started and buying a Shure microphone, I'm going to come to your house and bop you over the head with this.

So, what do you think about the PD200W? How does it line up with the rest of the line of their mics? How does it line up against other budget dynamic microphones? How does it line up against other professional microphones in your opinion?

Let me know down in the comments. And while you're down there, make sure to hit the like and subscribe. Hit the notification bell so you know when I have new videos coming out.

I talked in my last video about doing a webcam competition. I'm thinking about maybe doing one with the microphones as well. Let me know down in the comments if that's something you'd like to see.

But we're going to end it on that. Thank you so much for watching, and as always, let's get to work.