This mic was purchased for use with a Canon HV-20 camcorder. Primary purpose is for videotaping interviews with people who are sitting (not moving around). It comes with a 20' cable, which is more than enough for use in any room in the average size home.
Build quality: better than I expected for the price, the battery and pre-amp holder feel more like aluminum than plastic (it's hard to tell under the black paint). The mic element itself is tiny, and comes with a lapel clip and foam wind screen. The wind screen, like the mic element itself, is tiny and pretty easy to pull off, so keep an eye on it that it doesn't become lost. The battery is one of the "button" types, rather than a "AA" (which I would have preferred). One battery is supplied I have no idea of how long it might last, so better have a spare. The mike is a condenser type, so it will not work at all if the battery is dead.
Performance: Very good! The sound quality is better than I had expected for the price of this product. Frequency response seems perfectly adequate for picking up voices which is why you use a lavalier mike in the first place and signal-to-noise ratio is excellent at the standard gain setting on the HV-20 camcorder. The frequency response in the user manual is 70 to 18,000 hz. This mic has an impedance of 1000 ohms, which places it a step down in performance from more expensive, professional mics which generally have 600ohm impedance (you get a better s/n ratio). I am very pleased with the results from this mic. The captured sound of a person's voice is as clear as it could be, with very little perceptible static. Using this lavalier mic also has the benefit of completely eliminating internal motor noise from the camera's tape mechanism.
SUMMARY: You can spend $200~$500 and get a wireless lavalier mic, or if you live with the 20' cable, get this one for $35. It's certainly good enough for most people's home videos, and the sound quality (for human voice) is excellent. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
NOTE: The ATR-35 is a monaural microphone: when connected to a Stereo mic input jack on a camcorder like the Canon HV-20, it will produce a signal only on the left audio channel. If this is a problem for you, an inexpensive Mono-to-Stereo adapter is available from Radio Shack (p/n 274-374, $3.99) that duplicates the output from the ATR-35 to both the left and right channels (this sounds better, at least to my ears).
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