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This setup is IMPRESSIVE! 😱 | Hohem iSteady V2 gimbal + Comica VDLive 10 Wireless Microphones Review
Is the Google Pixel 4a, Hohem iSteady V2 and Comica VDLive 10 the perfect combo? The AI tracking and great audio quality is definitely a great differentiator. Oh, and this setup is great for Zoom calls too!
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✨ WATCH NEXT ✨
- Zhiyun Smooth-Q3 https://youtu.be/w433VjjA--0
- Gimbal vs DJI Pocket 2 https://youtu.be/yWrwTYKc5aE
- Google Pixel 4a Review https://youtu.be/7wNDXsDKoCg
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#smartphonegimbal #bestvideosetup #wirelessmicrophone
📖 CHAPTERS 📖
00:00 - Introduction
01:01 - B-Roll Example Footage
01:38 - My thoughts of the gimbal
02:23 - Gimbal Modes
03:37 - Hohem mobile app
04:29 - Why the Comica Wireless Microphones are a must!
07:08 - Vlogging test
08:03 - Why I use it for Zoom calls?
09:37 - The insane AI tracking!!
11:34 - More features of the Comica Microphones
15:30 - Zhiyun Smooth-Q3 vs Hohem iSteady V2
18:30 - Conclusion
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- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-16-35
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens https://geni.us/canon-lens-70-200
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- 0:00 Introduction
- 1:01 B-Roll Example Footage
- 1:38 My thoughts of the gimbal
- 2:23 Gimbal Modes
- 3:37 Hohem mobile app
- 4:29 Why the Comica Wireless Microphones are a must!
- 7:08 Vlogging test
- 8:03 Why I use it for Zoom calls?
- 9:37 The insane AI tracking!!
- 11:34 More features of the Comica Microphones
- 15:30 Zhiyun Smooth-Q3 vs Hohem iSteady V2
- 18:30 Conclusion
hello everyone i was really hoping to do this video outside but it's been reading for the last few days and also plans to be raining for the next few months so i'm going to try and do the best video that i can inside so a few months ago i reviewed the zayun's move to free which was my first phone gamble and overall i pretty much enjoyed it there were two main problems with it that made didn't use it that much the first one was the audio quality wasn't the best coming from my phone and also the ai tracking really wasn't that great but now that i have these new pieces of equipment so i have the hoem ice steady v2 that has built-in ai tracking which is really cool and also this wireless microphone from comica i actually have both of these problems solved but what is even more interesting is that i end up using this setup even more for my video calls than to just take some videos in general so i'm going to talk about all of this inside of this video but let's get started by rolling the intro for those of you who are new to this channel i'm like ben mahalford a young photographer and filmmaker legend become better at this art let's get started by showing some of the footage i filmed using this gimbal [Music] okay so while i'm heading back home i wanted to quickly talk about my experience using this gimbal and if i like it or not so overall it does seem to do a pretty good job at stabilizing the shots which is a pretty good thing but it's also a little bit weird because even though it's really easy to use it's really easy to open to close use adjusters for the ai to start stop recording turn the camera all kinds of things like that one thing i really have a hard time is switching between the different shooting modes so there's four shooting modes i think but without the app actually i never really figured out how to get it working using only the gimbal so this is definitely a little bit of a disappointment it might just be me it might be super easy to do and i just didn't figure it out but it's not a good sign that i couldn't figure it out but it's definitely freezable i guess i just had to look dumb complaining about how hard the modes are to change to then understand how they work so i finally figured it out and it's actually not that hard at all so if we come here and we long press on the record button and then press on the power button once we go on the first mode which is the default mode which is pan tilt so if i go up it's going to tilt the camera and then i actually going to pan around if i turn the handle here so this is the default mode the one that most people are probably going to use most of the time then if you go here and we long press on the record button and press twice on the power button here we're actually going to go in the second mode which is lock for detailed so it's not going to go up and down but it's gonna pan around so we can still pan around by turning this and the faster we turn the more it's gonna be responsive then if we go in the third mode right here we're actually gonna long press triple click on it and we're gonna go unlock mode so this whatever i do here if i try turning or anything like that it always keeps the camera exactly in the same initial angle and finally we have our last mode right here now if we long press on the record button and click four times on the power button we're gonna get inside of pov mode so this is just gonna follow whatever we're doing with the camera so these are the four modes we can have which is pretty similar to any other gimbal out there there's also a few other modes inside of the camera app so it's actually pretty great camera apps you have all your basic photo video and also time lapse mode but what is really cool inside of that app is actually you have a pro mode so you can go inside and you can customize everything so you can customize the shutter speed you can customize everything else so this is actually really nice you can do all of this inside of the camera app without having to use another pro camera app and have to pay for an extra app to get some more advanced settings but what like i talked about in some of my other videos i'm using the default camera app on the google pixel 4a because that's pretty much the only one that works well for me um because of the phone that doesn't have enough power to be able to use the full potential of the other apps so that's a little bit different for me and that's why i'm using the default camera app even though the other camera apps have a little bit more options inside of them okay so now let's talk about audio because i think that's one thing that most people don't really understand why it's so useful but it's fifty percent of your video so if you don't have good audio you're definitely having a problem in a situation like right now where there's a lot of noise right beside because there's a road passing on the side if i use the internal audio of the google pixel 4a we're gonna see it's actually pretty bad and if i just start walking a little bit away i'm not even sure you're going to hear me at all from the internal microphones of the lupix 4a or pretty much any other smartphone you might be using when filming videos so this is where my new product my second product comes in and these are the kamika vd live 10 microphones and these are simply some wireless microphones that work with pretty much any device you have so i'm going to put them on okay so i took out the receiver right here so all you have to do because it's usbc there's also a version for apple devices with a lightning port is to plug it inside of your phone now if you go inside of the google camera app so i'm going to open it right here and we go on the video mode i actually had a little problem because it wasn't working before didn't really understand what was happening but it should normally have a message that appears and says that the external microphone has been detected then you need to go in your setting and make sure that external microphone is actually on so for me yesterday when i was testing it it was off so it wasn't working so now i can come here i can put my phone back on the gimbal right here okay so now all i have to do to get some better audio is take out one of these two microphones there's actually two inside of the charging case and i'm just gonna add right here a dead cat this is basically just a thing that allows to cut out some noise of the wind so if there was real windy outside right now it would allow to get some better audio and not the annoying noise of the wind but now if i put it on me right here we're gonna switch the audio on the google pixel 40 using this external microphone and if i start walking back the audio should still be as good as it was when i was close i could probably even go inside of the house right here close the door and you should still be able to hear me because it's using actually the same wireless technology than your wi-fi uh but it has a technology to make sure that you don't get too much interference even if there's a lot of wi-fi spots around here so overall you should be getting much better audio using a little microphone like this and i really like this because i can leave my phone right there i can walk away get some more interesting shots using my phone and this gimbal without having to be always very close to the microphone of my phone to get some good audio so i think it's definitely very interesting to get something like this little microphone if you want to be getting some better audio out of your phone if you plan on using your phone a lot to be making some videos okay so while the sun is out i wanted to do a quick little vlogging example because i definitely think this is going to be one of the use cases of using both of these devices together or even separate and right now i have the ai tracking so if i move around the cell phone right here the camera should follow me pretty nicely and always keep my head more or less centered i know i'm going to be cropped in quite a lot that's because i'm using the google camera app on my google pixel 4a and there's no one i go lens it would be much better if i could have a wide lego lens to be able to do this example and get more inside of the shot but i don't have that so i'm using what i can do right now but we're still getting the good video quality from the rear camera which is pretty great because that's definitely one of my problems using the front camera when filming these types of video the audio also should be pretty good using the wireless microphone right now i hope there's no interference or things like that but normally it should work just fine okay so i actually filmed this part yesterday but i forgot to put my microphone on so i didn't have any audio when i got to edit this part of this video but another use case why i really like using this little setup is actually to make some video calls and this one was a little bit surprising but the reason why this is so great is that if i have it on a table like i have right now i can simply use a gesture and it's going to start recording me like it is doing right now and now if i move around or things like that i can concentrate on the call and not think too much about is my face in the frame or not another really great thing using this is actually i can put the camera down and not have to hold it all the time i used to get a little bit uh some problems in my arms they were sore after a certain time if i had to hold the phone for like half an hour an hour two hours when making a vehicle so being able to just put it down on the table and not think about it afterwards is actually pretty great but it's also really great if i take it up here and i start walking around i can actually show you around and it's always going to check my face so i don't have to be looking all the time and adjusting the phone to make sure that inside of the frame but what is even better is that now if i stop it right here and now for using the rear camera so usually when i'm in a video app i can actually do that automatically i can super easily point stuff out to people and if i start turning around the camera here it's super smooth it actually makes it really easy when watching the video so it's not something that this can make people sick if you're going around and showing around things like that so that's actually pretty useful if you want to have some video calls that are higher quality so this is definitely an unexpected but very welcome use case for using this little gimbal and also this microphone okay so definitely have to geek out about the ai tracking of this gimbal because it is so good so first of all you want to make sure that just like any other gimbal the camera is nice and stabilized on the gimbal and we're gonna power it on and you're gonna see it's super easy to get the ai tracking going so i'm gonna start recording right away with the front facing camera on my phone but now we're gonna enable the tracking mode inside of the gimbal and this is very important it's built in inside of the gimbal so it has a wide angle view camera so you can really track better than if it's using your phone to do the tracking so now we're going to go inside of here actually was filming the back here so i'm going to just start filming in the front i'm going to go on the top here just a little button so we're going to press the button here we're going to see that a light is going to come on and it's going to be red then it's going to flash one time so we're just going to wait for the flash and now it's ready to track so all you have to do to track is simply make this motion with your hand and right away we see that the light is green so now it's tracking me so now if i come and i start walking back here i can actually just walk back and you can see it's following me perfectly and that's one of the problems i had with the other ai trackings that i tried on the dji pocket 2 or the xium smooth 23 is that it wasn't always very reliable as a tracking but here even if i try tricking it so going down behind the table or things like that it always follows me it's also a very natural and very good looking track just like if somebody else was actually operating the camera not just like an ai because it's not very janky or anything like that so it's a very good track in the end and really i tried fooling it multiple times and it never misses in the end so that's very impressive the technology that they got inside of this one but i think there's another thing that is even better so i'm just going to stop recording here then i'm going to close the gimbal and this cool thing is actually that we can flip around now the camera and use the rear facing camera so like i said in multiple episodes you're much better to use your rear facing camera because it has much better video quality but most of the time if the tracking isn't good you cannot really trust it to be doing a good job in the end okay so now let's quickly talk about what makes this whole setup of the kamika vd-live 10 microphones so useful so first of all this is a charging case so once you open it up you're gonna have your microphones that are gonna be right here which is very useful and this is gonna light up in just in a second and show us that all the batteries are full right now talking of batteries they each have about 60 to 90 minutes of record time so that's the time when you're recording audio using them but if they're only in standby they get a full four hours of battery life and also if you want to be charging them it takes about two hours inside of the case which is a little bit long but as long as you're putting them back regularly inside of the case it shouldn't be a problem in more situation but if you're doing a full day shoot maybe these are not the best wireless microphones for you up to now i had no problems at all using them there's no problems with interference or anything like that so that's pretty great but now if we take out right here the receiver we're gonna look at the side right here we're gonna see that there's no button to turn it on or off so if we turn it on the little screen right here is gonna turn on and show us that we're open another side right here we have a button that has m and s and this is basically if you want to have a mono or stereo file in the end mono is going to take the input of the two microphones and put them together if you take the stereo option it's actually going to record one microphone on one of the channels and the second microphone on the second channel so this is very useful if you want to be too able to edit both of these channels afterwards so both of the macro phones separately afterwards and another thing that's really great with this little recipe is actually it's going to work with pretty much any other devices just like i showed earlier you can simply plug it in using the usbc inside of here but i also thought about different other ways of using it so first of all you can take the hot shoe mount right here and put it on top of your camera just like you would with most microphones and they also give a cable here to be able to plug it inside of your camera and get that recording directly inside of a 3.5 millimeter jack like we're used to doing but it's even better than that they also come with this little adapter here where it changes from usbc to usb-a so if you have another computer you can actually plug this in into your older computer and also record there now if you look at one of the microphones right here again we just take them out and they're on magnetic inside of the case so they're super easy to take on and off so we have a built-in microphone at the top here but if you wanted we could also plug in our own little microphone at the balance that's what i'm doing right now i have a wireless microphone with the lav so we could do this with these microphones too so this transmitter but if you come inside here we also have an option right here for simplex or duplex modes and this is why this system is so special so if we put it on simplex mode and we start recording this is just gonna act as a normal microphone if we decided to plug in a microphone at bottom here it would in simplex mode use that microphone instead of using the built-in one but now there's also another neat little feature here so if we switch into duplex mode and i think these are the only microphones that actually offer this now if we put some headphones inside of here you can actually monitor the sound directly from this little device so i can hear that the audio is sounding pretty good right now and this is very useful if you're outside and you need to check quickly that your own audio is working properly or not so somebody like me that films myself is actually very useful to have these little microphones that you can check the audio by yourself to be sure that your audio actually sounds good without having to go to the camera and check on the camera that the audio recording is okay then on the side here there's another little option here so we're gonna be able to press on it to change how loud the microphone is so this is the gain of the microphone so if we click on it we're going to have different volume levels and appear here so we have one two three and four for the volume so we can decide how loud we want our microphone to be i found that for my setup four seems to be the best setting so yeah overall they're very versatile you can really use them pretty much in any situation as plug and play microphones you can even like monitor your audio by using your own headphones so it really makes a nice little set for these wireless microphones [Music] [Music] so [Music] okay so now i'm still using the kamikaze wireless microphone and it's actually pretty noisy there's a truck passing right back so this is going to be a great test to see how well it works but what i really wanted to talk about is the differences between these two and which one you should buy in the end so the first really big point of the hoem icd v2 is actually the size so it is so small in the hand when it's all closed off so even when i had the handle right here it's not very big it actually fits inside of a hand where design you smooth q3 is actually a lot bigger especially when you add the legs it's hard to put in your backpacks or things like that so this is definitely a huge plus for the whole end if you look at other features most of them have very similar features so they have both very similar modes for shooting they also have about the same battery life they have pretty much everything else that is very similar between the two where the difference comes is when you need to be using the apps or using the ai so the built-in ai inside of the hoem ista dv2 is a great feature and really really works well we had more problems using the ai when using the app on the xyun smooth q3 so if you need to be filming yourself it's definitely better to go with the hoem because you can be able to use the ai and get much better shots in the end uh using this one another pretty big advantage of the whole mic too is actually the camera app where you have way more settings than the one inside of the zyun smooth q3 so that's a big one if you want to be able to use manual shutter speeds or things like that so that's definitely a pro thing inside of the whole ice steady too one advantage of the zhiyun smooth two free is the motors they're much stronger and they seem to work a lot better and just overall when you take out this unit's move to your free can start shooting right away without having to tweak anything and it feels really good it feels responsive it really does whatever you're trying to do without having to think about it too much the hoem i said ev2 instead i actually had to go inside of the settings of the app it's a great thing because you really have the control of everything but i had to customize pretty much everything to get a follow and tracking that actually worked as i wanted with like the smoothness and everything uh two different things i like with as i used smooth q3 i never played with any settings and it just works great out of the box they're also a little bit different in terms of price so designing smooth q3 is less expensive but i definitely think that they're 40 dollars more to get that as a home ice 82 is great if you're filming yourself and you'll be using things like the ai tracking or if the size is important that's a very important thing for me so in that case i think this is a great choice so there's one last feature i forgot to mention on the whole m i said ev2 and it's this integrated light which can be pretty useful especially when i'm making my video calls later at night i must say that i was pretty impressed overall with the performance of the om i72 especially the ai tracking which is very good and i was also pretty impressed with the audio quality from the kamika wireless microphones they're half the price of the world wireless go and even offer more versatility so it's a great option if you want to get some wireless microphone but you don't want to pay a lot of money for them if you enjoyed this video please let me know by hitting the like button below and definitely subscribe for more content on photography and filmmaking see you in the next one [Music]
Video Links
- 🔗 BUY the Hohem iSteady V2
- 🔗 BUY the Comica VDLive 10
- Zhiyun Smooth-Q3
- Gimbal vs DJI Pocket 2
- Google Pixel 4a Review
- Instagram: @loic.bellemare.alford ()
- TikTok
- My online store
- Affiliate link for Epidemic Sound
- https://kit.co/loic.bellemare.alford/youtube-gear
- DJI Pocket 2 Creator Combo
- 128 gb MicroSD card
- Canon 6D Mk
- Google Pixel 4a
- Canon ZOOM LENS EF24-105mm F4L IS II USM
- Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 Lens
- Canon EF 70-200mm f/4.0L-IS II USM Lens
- VANGUARD VEO 2 265CB CARBON FIBER TRIPOD
- DJI MAVIC AIR
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What is this video about?
A few months back, I reviewed the Zhiyun Smooth Q3 as my first smartphone gimbal, and while it was solid, two things held me back: the audio quality was rough, and the AI tracking wasn't reliable. Now I've got the Hohem iSteady V2 with built-in AI tracking and the Comica VDLive 10 wireless microphones—and honestly, they've solved both problems. Better yet, I've ended up using this combo way more for video calls than general video work.
Starting with the gimbal itself, the Hohem is impressively compact. It stabilizes shots smoothly and is intuitive to use once you figure out the mode switching—which involves long-pressing the record button and tapping the power button different numbers of times. The camera app built into the gimbal is excellent too; you get a proper pro mode with manual control over shutter speed and other settings, which makes a real difference if you want to dial in your exposure.
The Comica VDLive 10 microphones changed the game for me. When I'm outdoors, the internal phone mic is basically useless—especially near road noise. These wireless lavs work with any device via USB-C (or Lightning for iPhones), and the audio quality jump is night and day. They come with a nice charging case, offer 60–90 minutes of record time per charge, and the receiver has some genuinely clever features: you can toggle between mono and stereo recording, monitor audio through headphones in duplex mode, and adjust gain in four levels.
The real magic, though, is the AI tracking. With the gimbal's built-in wide-angle camera, the tracking is reliable and natural-looking—nothing janky, and it doesn't get fooled easily. I tested it repeatedly trying to trick it, and it held steady even when I moved behind obstacles. This is a huge step up from the app-based tracking I'd struggled with before.
The video call use case surprised me the most. The gimbal's AI keeps me centered in frame without me thinking about it, and being able to set the phone on a table eliminates the sore arms I'd get from holding my phone for hours. With the rear camera and smooth panning, I can show things around me without making viewers queasy—way better than shaky phone footage.
Comparing it to the Zhiyun Smooth Q3: the Hohem wins on size, AI reliability, and manual camera controls. The Zhiyun has stronger motors and requires zero setup tweaking, which is nice. The Hohem costs about $40 more, but if you're filming yourself or value compact size and solid AI tracking, it's worth it. Oh, and there's a built-in light on the Hohem that's handy for late-night calls.
The Comica mics are genuinely impressive for the price—half the cost of a Rode Wireless GO but with more features. If you need better audio for mobile content and don't want to break the bank, they're an easy recommendation.