Speaker 1: Zoom's H4 Essential Recorder gives wedding filmmakers everything you need to record high quality 32-bit float audio at a wedding for a very affordable price. Spoiler for how I feel about this audio recorder out of the way because I respect your time. Today I'm gonna be reviewing this recorder from the perspective of a wedding filmmaker. So if you film weddings or corporate videos or commercial videos or anything where you need a high quality 32-bit float audio recorder that will not break the bank, keep watching. Also for the sake of ethics, I want you to know this video isn't paid or sponsored by Zoom, but they did send me this recorder so I could make this review. And I want you to know this video does have a sponsor. It's my friends at MediaZilla. If you're a wedding filmmaker that wants a beautiful way to share your wedding films that makes your couples feel like they're watching something on Netflix, you have to check out MediaZilla. They offer you a massive step up from sharing your wedding films on YouTube or Vimeo and there's no ads, no copyright claims to worry about. You can check out MediaZilla at the link in the description below. And when you use that link, you will get two months free or 20% off the cost of any annual membership. Thanks to MediaZilla for sponsoring this video. Getting right into the review, I'd like to start by showing you a piece of history. This is the first audio recorder I ever purchased, a Zoom H4n. And while it has plenty of scuffs and scratches and the buttons are a little sticky, this recorder still works just as well as it did when I purchased it way back in 2009. Now Zoom has made updates to this recorder with the most notable being the H4n Pro that added locking input jack connectors and some other quality of life improvements. But here we are with the H4n Essential, which is easily the biggest upgrade that this line of recorders has ever seen. It keeps all the old features, but streamlines the entire setup in a way that will give you the features that you need while also cutting costs. So let's talk about these upgrades. To start, if you've used Zoom's F3 recorder, the H4 Essential is gonna feel very familiar to you because Zoom has gone all in on 32-bit float recording with the H4 Essential, just like it did with the F3. What I mean by that is that when you turn this recorder on, it shows you waveforms that indicate the audio is recording and you can even press the mixer button up here to adjust the audio volume up and down. But here's the critical difference between this recorder and Zoom's previous recorders like the older H4n. With a previous Zoom recorder, as well as any non 32-bit float recorder, you wanted to monitor your audio meters throughout the recording to make sure that they ideally hit between negative 20 and negative 12 decibels, because your goal would always be to get your audio loud enough, but not too loud where it would peak and be ruined. This peaking was also accompanied on some recorders by a bright red light that would flash if the gain was too loud, indicating that it was peaking. With the H4 Essential on the other hand, just like the F3, you will see waveforms on the screen and you can access the mixer button, like I said. But because the Zoom H4 Essential is recording in 32-bit float, any adjustments that you make to the gain on the mixer screen are only going to affect the preview of the audio that you're hearing with your headphones. These adjustments will not show up in the final audio file. So there's no worrying about your gain being too loud or too quiet, and there's no peaking light or warning either. You can simply turn on the recorder, confirm the waveforms are showing up, and press record to record high quality audio. Then if things are too loud or too quiet, you can fix them in your editing software. Just keep in mind that the only time that you may not be able to fix things is if you're running your audio recorder through something like a DJ soundboard and the audio is already peaking from their soundboard. If you're recording audio that was already peaked, you're not gonna be able to magically recover it like you would if you were recording directly from the microphone receiver, which would be recoverable. Also, I know I just said that there's no peaking, but I do want you to know that the recorder will warn you if the audio signal is too powerful, and that is kind of like a peaking warning, and I know people might call me out about that, so I'm just letting you know it has that. But for 99.9% of recordings, you're not gonna need to worry about it. Anyways, if you're wondering about how the audio quality of this recorder is, I'm happy to tell you that I'm using it to record this video, so if you think this sounds good, you should be good to go. That said, I do want you to know that after testing the H4 Essential side-by-side with audio recordings from the Zoom F3, it sounds to my ear like the preamps in the H4 Essential are a bit worse than the F3, and I find myself needing to boost the gain of the H4 Essential by about six decibels more to compensate for that gain difference between these recorders. To be clear, once I did that, the audio quality was great, especially for a recorder at this price point, but I want you to be aware that the audio quality of this recorder might not be to the level of the F3, and you may need to work with it more in post to make it sound as good. But I would also be aware that the audio quality is gonna be heavily influenced by the quality of microphone that you use, so use a good mic if you want this recorder to sound its best. Also, I want you to know that to my ears, I did not hear any buzzing or humming or other distortions from this recorder. Going back to the H4 Essential Simplified and Streamlined interface now. As I've already showed you, Zoom Simplified setting your gain levels, but they've also simplified a lot more. To start, let's talk buttons, which all these buttons, by the way, have a soft touch feel to them that keeps them quiet so you won't hear any clicking button press sounds when pressing them. These buttons remind me of the Start and Select buttons on my Super Nintendo from way back in the day. They feel great. With these buttons, you can easily tell the recorder which audio input you want to use by simply pressing the one or two or mic button to use the top microphones on the recorder. You also have a giant record button, which as the name implies, records. You have Start, Stop, and Forward, Back buttons. On the left side, you have Line In, Line Out, and Volume Control for the headphones. And on the right, you have a scroll wheel and button to change settings, a USB-C port for charging that can also be used as a USB-C audio interface, the power and hold switch, and a slot for using Zoom's Bluetooth adapter that will enable you to control the recorder remotely and use it with timecode. Which incidentally, if you want to use this recorder with timecode, I've created a step-by-step tutorial showing you how to use timecode with any Zoom or Tascam audio recorder. I highly recommend watching it. I'll link to it up in the corner and down in the video description. As you can see, there isn't a ton of buttons on this recorder. And what's funny is that whenever I initially used it, I searched around for a menu button of some sorts that would let me access more settings, but then I realized, wait a second, the menu is always present on the recorder and accessible using the scroll wheel that very comfortably happens to be right where your thumb is resting. So if you want to access any of the settings of the recorder, all you have to do is scroll and then press the Enter button. With this menu, you can look at your previous files. You can change the settings for the built-in microphones as well as the XLR and quarter inch inputs, change the sample rate and other basic settings like the time and date and language. What's great is that if you're a wedding filmmaker or someone that finds yourself consistently recording the same things over and over again, you should not need to dive into these menus often at all. And setting up the recorder to record is as simple as selecting your audio input and then pressing record. It's very quick. And as I said earlier, it's a streamlined process overall that I really like. Talking battery life now, Zoom says that using the built-in mics, this recorder is capable of recording up to nine hours when using alkaline or rechargeable batteries and 19 hours when using lithium. Keep in mind though, that for a wedding you most likely aren't going to be using these built-in mics and instead you'll be plugging into a soundboard or microphone via the XLR or quarter inch inputs. To test the battery life of the H4 Essential and simulate using it at a wedding, I plugged a microphone that did not require phantom power into the XLR jack and put some fresh alkaline batteries in and recorded audio with the recorder until they died. In total, the batteries only lasted for two and a half hours this way, which was not a very long time, but also not very surprising considering that the recorder would require more power to record this way than using the built-in microphones. The main thing you need to keep in mind is that if you are recording a long reception, I would either use lithium batteries, which would probably get you close to five hours of recording time, or plug the H4 Essential into a power source, either a wall outlet or a USB-C power brick. Any of those options should result in you having plenty of power for a whole wedding. And I always recommend plugging in for power if you can. Now, there is one interesting quirk of the H4 Essential that we need to talk about, and that is the XLR and 1.25-inch inputs on the bottom of the device. Thankfully, as you can see, these are both 1.25-inch and XLR inputs, giving you a ton of versatility if you're plugging into any soundboard. But like I said, there is a quirk, and that quirk is identifiable right here by this text at the bottom of the recorder where it says XLR mic TRS line. What this means is that if you are recording from a soundboard, that soundboard is usually going to be set to mic level, which in essence means that it's not gonna be pushing out a super loud audio signal to your recorder because the audio has already been processed through the soundboard. Alternatively, though, if you are plugging into the back of a speaker, for example, that audio signal is usually going to be line level, which is significantly louder because the soundboard knows that it's needing to pump up the volume a lot out to the speaker because it's gonna want things to be loud. The issue that you can run into is that if you plug an audio recorder into a line level output, the audio recorder won't be able to handle that volume of audio and it will peak. Now, I know I just said earlier this recorder records in 32 bit float, so peaking is most likely not gonna be an issue, but to prevent that from ever happening, what Zoom is essentially saying with this text that says XLR mic and TRS line, Zoom is recommending that if you're plugging into a mic level input to use an XLR cable, and if you're connecting to a line level input to use a quarter inch, also known as a TRS cable. This isn't a big deal because I always recommend having both of these cables and you can even get adapter cables that will work between both of them. But what makes this weird is that most modern audio recorders that I've used have a simple setting in the menu where you can choose whether you want the input to be at mic level or line level. You do not need to use a different type of cable to change the setting. So this takes me back to the premise that I have for the H4 Essential, and that is that Zoom is gonna give you the features that you need while also cutting costs. I believe that this XLR and TRS text at the bottom of the recorder summarizes that premise well, in that I'm betting that Zoom was probably able to save some money by doing things this way instead of using a different component for both XLR and quarter inch that could handle mic and line level. Now, this talk about cost cutting leads me into one of the last things that we need to talk about this recorder because we need to talk about the overall build quality of this device. Whenever you take it out of the box, you're gonna see that it is essentially the same size as the H4n and H4n Pro, enough so that it'll actually fit into the case that came with my H4n, which is where I'll most likely be storing this recorder going forward because it does not come with a protective case. As the Essential name implies, I believe that with this naming system, Zoom is saying that they're giving you everything that you need to record high quality audio, but they're also trying to make this recorder as affordable as possible, meaning that you're not going to get things like a case. And if I had to describe the overall build quality of the H4 Essential, this recorder feels a good bit lighter than other audio recorders that I've used, including the older H4n, the Tascam X6, and even Zoom's own F3. Yes, the F3 is significantly smaller than the H4, but it's also more dense and it feels more premium. So it's clear that Zoom tried to save money with the manufacturing of the H4 Essential, and that is especially apparent not only in the lightweight plastic construction of this recorder, but also in the crooked 32-bit float sticker on the front of mine. It came like this from the factory, and it's not bothering me enough that I want to take a razor blade and remove it and then reattach it where it's correctly lined up, but I did clearly consider it. In addition, it's almost a meme to me at this point, but whereas I thought that we'd gotten away from flimsy SD card door covers with the Zoom F3, the H4 Essential's SD card door feels especially flimsy, and I'm sure that a lot of filmmakers will probably have this break off relatively quickly. All that said, while this recorder does feel cheaper, I would not expect that to affect the audio quality in any way. And as long as you're not throwing it or dropping it from a significant height, you should be fine. Or to put things another way, with the Tascam X8, I felt like that was a more premium device that felt heavier and better put together, but it also came with a massive glass touchscreen. And if you dropped it, there was a good chance that it could crack. So basically what I'm saying is don't drop the H4 Essential or the Tascam X8, and you should be fine. Just don't drop your audio recorders. Cool. Anyways, build quality out of the way. We've talked about all the features and capabilities of this device, but I've saved the most interesting for last, because that is the price. For context, I bought my old, trusty, and reliable Zoom H4n in 2009 for $300. It was literally my first purchase that I ever made from B&H. And now, here we are 15 years later, and at the time of recording this review with the H4 Essential, considering all this time has passed and inflation has run rampant and prices have gone up for everything, how much do you think this new recorder costs? This is where things are really mind blowing, because Zoom is pricing the H4 Essential at $200 at the time of making this video. Yes, $100 cheaper than what I paid for one in 2009. What? Are you serious? Yes, I'm serious. It's kind of freaking me out here, okay? Zoom is making inflation-resistant audio recorders that actually go down one third in price over their previous version? Who could have guessed? So here's my point. In my opinion, after having tested the H4 Essential extensively, I think that this is a great recorder that lives up to the Essential name that they have given it. Zoom is giving you a ton of power and 32-bit float audio recording while cutting the costs in a lightweight plastic housing and as the name implies, that's really all that you need. So if you are a wedding filmmaker that has been looking for a 32-bit float audio recorder that is not going to break the bank, I think that the H4 Essential is a great choice and I will link to it down below if you want to pick it up. Also down below, I'm gonna link to my free wedding videographer gear guide. So if you are a wedding filmmaker and you're wondering what gear to purchase, not just audio, but any gear, you are going to love this guide because it's gonna show you everything that you need as well as the links for where to get it and it's gonna save you a ton of time and most importantly, it's free. You can download the gear guide at the link down in the video description and also Zoom released two other recorders, an H1 Essential and an H6 Essential. Do you want to see reviews of those recorders? Which one do you want to see a review of? Let me know because I don't wanna just make these reviews if you don't watch them. So yeah, let me know in the comments down below and also subscribe if you wanna see those videos. Thanks so much for watching and have a great day. Bye.