What Are The Best Bluetooth Lapel / Lavalier / Lav Mics of 2024? External Smartphone Microphones

Ever since audio jacks have disappeared from smartphones, first Apple and now Android phones, it has become increasingly difficult to use an external microphone. At first, dongles worked ok to connect between the lightning jack or USB C and an audio jack, but as the phone's software gets updated, these systems break and the phones no longer recognize the audio jacks.

I've struggled with finding a good solution for an external lapel or lavalier microphone that works with my Samsung smartphone, which no longer has an audio jack and requires a USB C dongle to connect. The Samsung brand USB C to audio jack dongle worked for a while, but that has now stopped working. When I plug in an external microphone (Rode Go) through the audio jack to a USB C dongle, it is no longer recognized by the phone as an external microphone, even though it switches to the headset.

The issue is compounded by the fact that I have to remove the battery backup case to use any Bluetooth headset. When the Samsung Note 20 Ultra was newish, it worked great even with the case, but after a firmware update, the audio pass-through stopped working years ago.

Bluetooth appears to be the only remaining option, which is not great, but it's going to have to work for now.

DJI MIC 2

Enter DJI to the rescue with their versatile new MIC 2. This microphone was initially introduced with the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 Creator Combo and syncs seamlessly with the Pocket 3. It also has a Bluetooth connection that can be easily connected to your phone. Once connected to your phone, the phone's video recording app will have an option to select Bluetooth as the microphone.

The Bluetooth connection has some audio compression, and there's nothing that DJI can do about that, but the audio is very usable and much better than the phone audio.

I thought that the mic would record 32-bit audio onboard simultaneously, but it turns out that function doesn't work when connected to the phone. It states in the manual that this does not work. I've seen some YT reviews that say it records onboard simultaneously while connected to Bluetooth phone.

That means your better off just using the microphone for high quality internal recording and sync it with the mobile phone audio.

This doesn't work: The magic happens when you enable internal audio recording because the DJI Mic 2 will now also record a 32-bit audio onboard that can later be synced with the video to get crystal clear, interference-free audio on your phone video recordings. How awesome is that! This is the only bluetooth lapel mic that offers high-quality onboard recording.

WHERE TO BUY

OTHER BLUETOOTH MICROPHONES

Since DJI introduced the MIC 2, it's not even worth looking at any other existing bluetooth microphones. They have set the bar, and until someone else makes one better, this is the way.