15Feb Saramonic UwMic10 Dual Channel UHF wireless System Review

UHF wireless systems have come a long way regarding price and ability over the last five years. Not long ago, if you wanted a UHF wireless lav system, your two main options were either Sennheiser or Sony, with only a few somewhat suspect alternatives. However, in 2016, there are literally dozens of companies offering wireless lav mic kits and many of those are in the UHF band. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the $270 Saramonic UHF wireless lav system.

The first thing you’ll notice as you look at the Saramonic UwMic10 system is that it look very similar to the Sony UWPD11 system. Both systems share an all metal housing and very similar controls, but there are two very noticeable differences. First and foremost is the price. At $270 the Saramonic UwMic10 system is less than half the price of the Sony UWPD11 system. On top of that, the UwMic10 system offers up one other major feature that is missing from almost every other UHF system under $1000, and that is a dual channel reciever.

What that means is that the Saramonic UwMic10 system is capable of receiving audio from two lav packs simultaneously. As you can see from the screen above, “A” channel comes from one transmitter and “B” channel comes from a second transmitter.That’s a huge advantage in terms of receiver size,

That’s a huge advantage in terms of receiver size and capability for the price. The only other company offering a dual receiver UHF lav system is Azden and the 330LT is not small, well designed, or even remotely close to the price range of the Saramonic UwMic10 system. On top of that, despite the downsides mentioned in the video review, the UwMic10 is a much better design across the board.

At this price range the Saramonic UwMic10 system is performing well above it’s class. Audio quality is great. While I don’t really care for the size of the included lav mic or the heavy bass sound it adds to a recording, it still sounds very good for a kit mic. It’s much better than the lav mics that are included in kits that are far more expensive.

While I have a few complaints about the Saramonic UwMic10 system in my video review, the biggest one is the frequency range. As of this post, Saramonic is only offering the system in the 600Mhz band. While this frequency is currently open for public use, the FCC has been threatening to sell this band off for a few years. 600Mhz was on the auction block in 2015 and it’s back under public review in 2016. While the band is open right now, it could be sold at any time and that’s a noticeable issue.

I spoke with Saramonic about this and they’ve told me that they plan to release units in other frequencies soon. The Saramonic UwMic10 system sounds great and has a lot more features than UHF systems twice that price, once they have a few more frequency options, they’ll really have an amazing system on their hands.

Tags: DSLR UHF audio, Saramonic UHF Lav, Saramonic UwMic10, Sennhieser G2, Sony UWP, Wireless lav