H6 Black : A Great Field Recorder For Any Production at great price - including MOVIES!

I have owned this little recorder for 2 years now and I've realized that it has been a great purchase! (My review is long but detailed and hopefully helpful)

Here's what I have done with it;

I have used this recorder to record in different music situations - even a string quartet, using 4 external Condenser microphones and the Zoom's own LR capsule for capturing stereo room sound - it sounded fantastic! Here is the video of it: also recorded a classical pianist's video using this recorder and a stereo ORTF mic pair. Here is the video: more exciting - I am currently using this little beast to record all of the audio for my very first feature film "HIKE". So the Zoom is the field recorder for us and we also use a Rode NTG-2 with a blimp on it outside. on top of a Rode Boompole PRO - a solid combo! So I would say that so far we have had no worries combining the Zoom H6 with the Rode NTG-2. Indoors we use a Rode M5 condenser mic with the Zoom. After some post production mixing, the dialogue and sound effects and ambiences sound great and very professional! I also love that the Zoom has the capsules available since it makes recording stereo ambiences very fast and easy on the spot! Hopefully you will be able to see and hear the movie in the start of 2024!

Here are the things I love about this recorder and also the things that you should keep in mind:

For about 350 euros you are getting 6 channels of phantom-powered 96kHz 24-bit recording! That is a lot! Even in a forest with no electricity, you can just hook up the H6 with a power bank and easily record 4 external condenser mics at once, and on top of that add the 2 channels of the capsule mic in the mix as well!

The sound quality in my opinion is very good and not at all far off from a Zoom F8 or Sound devices. You just have to learn the basics of recording great audio - but this you need to do with any other recorder anyway to capture great audio.

Don't worry - the recorder from my experience is not very noisy at all. Most importantly, especially when recording dialogue on a movie shoot, get the microphone always as close as you can so that you can keep the gain lower - that way you will eliminate a ton of undesired noise from your recordings! Also, if you still experience too much noise in your recordings, I would advise perhaps getting a microphone that has a hotter signal, since from my experience that makes a lot bigger of a difference than upgrading your recorder itself.

The recorder doesn't have timecode since it is not built for the complete professionals in the top tier of movie making. But I don't use or need it anyway since my Panasonic camera also doesn't have the timecode built in. I just use the trusted "clap" technique for syncing and have always manually synced my audio and video anyway.

The biggest obstacle that I came across when using the Zoom H6 as a field recorder was not actually the recorder itself but getting a field recording bag for it. As far as I am aware, there still isn't a special field recording bag made for the H6 where you could have the bag in front of you and the H6 properly mounted so that you can easily see the screen when looking down and also adjust the knobs. But for now I am using a small camera bag instead for that. In that bag I also have a regular smaller power bank with a usb mini cable which supplies power for the H6 for a long long time! No need to mess with the batteries in the back. But I also do have 3 pairs (4x each) of rechargable batteries in case I only use the H6 itself with no bag or anything.

But often we also just mount the Zoom H6 onto a tripod or a stand with a 3/8 thread and I also mount the power bank and the Rode Wireless GO 2 system (providing Lavaliers for us) on it. This also works and is comfortable to use when we are not moving around in the scene.

The menu in my opinion is well designed and is simple to use. You just have to get used to operating the whole menu system with two buttons - but it is actually very simple! And even though it isn't a touch screen, from my experience it has not slowed us down at all.

The quality is solid from my experience however the only thing that I have come across is that the screen of my H6 seems to get dust under it over time. I'm not sure how to stop or fix it but it is actually not a problem at all since we can see just fine on the LCD screen.

Overall, I absolutely love this recorder and even though I have thought about getting a Sound Devices before, I don't think I will since the Zoom H6 can still do everything I need it to and it is so easy to use and has never failed on me on a shoot before. The sound quality is great, the build quality from my experience should last for many more years and I am now creating a FEATURE FILM with just this for all of the audio! That's how much I love and trust this recorder ;)