Comica went directly after the Rode market with this CVM-V30 PRO, and at 1/3rd the price hit a home run. Side by side with the Rode VideoMic and the baby brother VideoMicro I found the Comica to have a crisper sound than the Rodes as the Rodes are a bit bass heavy. The Comica does have the ability to boost the gain by 10dB with an external switch, which I found very helpful. Increasing the gain on the mic vs. in camera provided much cleaner audio.I ran a few tests outside at the beach on a typical windy day, and the low pass filter did a great job even without the dead cat (fuzzy windscreen) but adding the dead cat cut out the wind completely. The Comica dead cat is very fuzzy, and I did have to reposition it to keep it out of the shot when using the wider angles, but that's quickly done with its cold-shoe mount.I ran a few tests using an external audio recorder and found that the noise floor (hiss) between the Comica and the Rode was only about 2dB louder in the Comica. Both performed equally well in isolating the side sounds as well as picking up sounds in the distance when pointed directly to the source.The Comica's shock mount outperformed the Rode's mount significantly. Both did a great job isolating sounds when touching the camera, however, when walking around and moving the camera, you definitely heard the Rode moving in its mount, and I never heard anything from the Comica.In conclusion, if you are looking for a budget-friendly shotgun mic, you can't go wrong with the Comica! It performs at the level of mics costing three times the amount!