[Apple MFi Certified] Lolly Lightning Microphone iOS 3D Digital Stereo Condenser Recording Microphone Compatible for iPhone iPad iPod，Record Your Demos, Speeches, Performances, Show (Black)

I spent $50 on this thing and it makes absolutely zero difference in the recorded sound quality. What a waste.

The Lolly has great promise to capture improved audio with your iPhone but falls slightly short in normal usage. Its greatest strength is its design and form factor. It fits the iPhone well and when installed feels solid and does not protrude awkwardly like some other external mics by Shure or Rode. It compliments the phone nicely and is lightweight. It also comes with a handy windscreen and portable rigid case to protect it when not in use. The buttons feel solid and positive and the LED's are a convenient way to let you know which mode you are in.However, my biggest issue is ease of use. For the normal user, Lolly could be challenging to set-up properly. The default gain setting tends to distort if you are shooting video and capturing live acoustic and especially amplified music. I always have to set the Lolly two or three clicks lower to avoid distortion. Lolly also defaults to mono mode (all 4 LED's lit up) which is odd because its main selling point is the ability to capture true immersive stereo. You have to switch to stereo mode (one LED lit) every time you want to capture true immersive stereo which is inconvenient. The built-in iPhone mic is mono only. The only reason one would want to buy an external mic is to capture stereo. Why not make the mic default to stereo mode? As a side note, Lolly is an M/S array (mid/side) and not XY which has a different stereo spread and the sub-bass (below 80Hz) tends to get accentuated when you use Lolly in mono mode.Lolly also defaults to using its own built-in reverb which has two settings...a short Room reverb and a longer Hall type. Admittedly, the short room reverb helps warm-up the audio and rounds out the sharp details helping smoothe out the high frequencies. I always turn off the reverb which is another button press until the LED's are lit green. Orange means room reverb and Red means Hall. Why not default to no reverb at all? Once you have all of these settings correct you can actually capture beautiful sounding audio. However, if your phone falls asleep or if you exit the recording or camera/video app you lose all settings and you have to do it all over again. There is no way to save your own default settings. Huge inconvenience and deal breaker if you want something fast and convenient.It all comes down to sound quality in the end. Lolly actually performs pretty well if you set it up correctly and if you are careful with your gain settings and the app that you use. I tested different apps and found that the Shure MOTIV video app works well and provides good metering so you know that you are not distorting. It also avoids using the iPhone AGC (automatic gain control) which is a good thing in my opinion. If you're capturing audio only the Rode recording app also provides metering and can be used with or without the iPhone AGC. These apps are available for free and work with any external mic like the Lolly. Skip using Garage Band and save yourself the limitations of recording duration and nonconventional set-up.If you have read this far then you must be serious about capturing better audio with your iPhone. Let's be real. A dedicated stereo recorder by Tascam, Olympus, Sony, etc will always capture better sounding audio then your iPhone ever could with an external mic. However, Lolly does indeed deliver on the promise of capturing true stereo recordings with your iPhone and is priced well. Sadly, it is not a true plug and play mic but can easily be improved by MELOAUDIO if they upgrade their firmware to give user default settings or by creating their own recording app. If you are okay with the additional attention to detail and inconvenience of having to set-up the gain and stereo settings every time you unplug it or quit the app then Lolly could work for you. Otherwise, there are other options available by Shure and Rode that are definitely much more expensive but have the convenience of having their own bespoke apps made to extend their feature set and make using their products more efficient by offering saveable user settings. I like my Lolly and have had good experience dealing with MELOAUDIO. They were very responsive and resolved an issue I was having with my original purchase. By the way, I paid full price for my Lolly. It works for my purposes of capturing live stereo recordings with the iPhone but could be improved significantly with a little updating from MELOAUDIO.

Almost useless as you have to have an app open other than the one you are recording with to set/manage levels.

Got this for my daughter for making vlogs and doing some videos. The sound is like night and day! She’s 11 and drops and beats this thing up, I’m not saying do that but am I saying it’s still going strong and sounds great!! Definitely worth every penny and it’s not many for what your getting.

All good

Instructions aren’t very good and it doesn’t even work

Horrible

extraordinaire