Neewer Teleprompter X11 - Premium Prompter.. for cheap

0:00 I love making budget videos.

0:01 They're probably some of my favorite videos to make

0:03 because I think the most important part of my job

0:05 is making sure you guys don't spend money

0:07 that you didn't need to spend in the first place.

0:09 And budget gear was really a great way

0:11 to do that as long as it's good budget gear,

0:14 which is what we're going to talk about today.

0:16 We're going to figure out if this is good.

0:17 We've got a brand new budget teleprompter by the company Neewer.

0:20 And if you're familiar with the Elgato teleprompter, which you probably are,

0:24 it's been a very popular video on this channel.

0:26 This is a teleprompter with a screen built into it that connects

0:28 to your computer and works like

0:30 a second monitor or third monitor fourth monitor.

0:33 It was designed for YouTubers and streamers so you could put your script

0:35 or your live Twitch chat on the screen right in front of your camera,

0:38 but it's also just blown up cuz you can do anything with it.

0:41 You can put your Zoom calls right in front of it.

0:43 I do that three days a week for Japanese lessons.

0:45 It's awesome.

0:46 But here we have another version from a company called Neewer,

0:50 spelled Neewer, pronounced Neewer.

0:51 If you're not familiar with Neewer,

0:52 Neewer is a company that makes a wide variety of high-quality budget devices.

0:58 I've owned a handful of their stuff.

1:00 I've owned their lights.

1:00 I've owned their camera mounts.

1:02 I'm actually using one of their tripods right now.

1:04 This camera actually both cameras are on Neewer tripods right now.

1:08 And they've released the X11 teleprompter, which is in a lot of ways very,

1:12 very similar to the Elgato one,

1:14 but because it's almost a third cheaper there are going to be some compromises.

1:19 We're going to go through it.

1:20 We're going to talk about what those compromises are,

1:22 how this compares to this, in what ways is it a cheaper version of the Elgato,

1:28 and in what ways, cuz there are a couple,

1:29 there actually some positives to this thing compared to the Elgato.

1:33 Now, this teleprompter actually came out a couple months ago

1:35 and I didn't even know about it until they reached

1:37 out and emailed me and told me about it

1:38 and asked if they could sponsor a video on the channel.

1:41 And because I like paying my employees and I like paying my bills,

1:43 I checked to make sure it was a good product and then I gave them a thumbs up.

1:47 But also we're going to do what we always do on sponsored

1:48 videos and I'm going to keep my opinion out of it.

1:50 I'm going to showcase to you what is the good,

1:54 the the the differences, and you're going to come to your own conclusions.

1:57 And let's go over these differences.

1:59 I think starting in the same order

2:01 that I discovered them opening up this product.

2:03 I think we start with the price difference.

2:04 The Elgato Prompter is $299.

2:06 The Neewer X11 is $219.

2:09 I've seen that price vary down to like $190 on Amazon.

2:12 I also think Neewer's going to give me a discount code.

2:14 They just haven't told me what it is yet.

2:15 That will be I'll put that here on the screen

2:17 and in the description down below if you want one.

2:19 When you pull this out of the box, there is a handful of things to assemble.

2:21 It's fairly simple.

2:23 Most things are like snap into place, which makes things simple enough.

2:28 But, there is a slight difference in build

2:30 quality that you will see slightly throughout this.

2:33 Things tend to be a little bit shakier.

2:35 The screen feels like it's a little more

2:36 off-the-shelf with a handful of ports on the side.

2:38 All the things that you kind of expect coming from a well-known budget brand.

2:41 You also get things like Velcro on the back

2:43 instead of like a custom-designed plate that screws in.

2:46 And then, you you know, you get the shrouds like this that stick on like that.

2:52 Although, the shroud situation is actually kind of cool.

2:55 It might not be as elegant, but it works really well.

2:57 For your regular cameras, you got this kind of sock here.

2:59 And again, you Velcro it on there,

3:00 and you put the lens through here instead of a whole shroud that covers the top.

3:04 If you're using a camera that tends to overheat,

3:06 this means that you don't have to trap all the heat around the camera,

3:09 and you still have the flexibility to move the lens in and out.

3:13 They also have a phone mount here.

3:15 And in order to do that, you flip around

3:18 this extra uh smaller hole to cover the light leaks.

3:23 They give you this little clamp here

3:25 with these two little twisty guys on the side.

3:29 And then, you stick your phone right over the hole.

3:32 And you make sure you get as much Velcro sticking on there as you can.

3:35 And there you go.

3:36 Not quite as fancy, but gets the same job done.

3:39 And then, I noticed it actually came with something really cool.

3:41 It's got its own quick release mount,

3:43 which is something that Neewer can do because

3:45 they already make a bunch of things like this.

3:47 If you're not familiar with a quick release mount,

3:49 basically you You a little plate that you put on the bottom of your camera,

3:52 and then it snaps on.

3:55 You push a little button and it comes right off.

3:58 No more screwing and unscrewing a camera to the bottom of this.

4:01 Also, it's a lot easier to set a position

4:04 and keep that exact same position every time.

4:06 This is actually something I bought for about $20 to add to my Elgato Prompter,

4:09 and ironically, it's a newer one.

4:12 It's got these little tightening screws on the bottom,

4:14 which I mean, you can hear Yeah,

4:18 a little plasticky, but allow you to loosen them up and down,

4:22 and also this direction.

4:24 So, you can place your camera wherever it needs to go.

4:26 Connecting this to computer works very similar to an Elgato product,

4:29 but it has some differences that might be a positive or a negative for you.

4:32 The Elgato Prompter uses something called DisplayLink.

4:34 It's a separate display technology that runs

4:36 it through the CPU instead of the GPU,

4:38 which means you can plug it into any regular USB port and it'll work just fine.

4:42 It means you have to have DisplayLink software installed,

4:45 but if you're putting it on a Mac where you're

4:46 limited to the amount of external screens you can have,

4:49 it doesn't count as one of those screens.

4:51 There's a debate about whether or not it

4:52 takes up more CPU resources than a regular screen,

4:55 but personally, I haven't noticed a difference in my usage.

4:57 The newer one has two different options.

4:59 It comes with two different cables, a regular C-to-C cable,

5:01 which if you plug into the USB-C port or one of the two ports,

5:04 it connects to your computer and it

5:05 just powers it on using DisplayPort Alt Mode.

5:07 It actually runs like a normal monitor.

5:10 You don't have to have any software installed, it just works.

5:13 It worked on my Mac mini, it worked on my PC laptop,

5:15 and it worked on my PC desktop when I plugged it into the motherboard

5:18 into one of my USB 4 ports that says DisplayPort on it.

5:21 If you can't do that on your PC,

5:22 maybe you have an older computer without that USB 4 port,

5:25 you can use a second cable that plugs into both HDMI

5:27 and USB-C and then just goes into USB-A on the computer.

5:31 You'll have to install the DisplayLink drivers,

5:32 but then it should work the same way.

5:34 This was a little confusing when I first set it up because it worked really well

5:37 on my Mac and I struggled with it on the PC until I figured out where it went.

5:41 But, this is where I found something interesting.

5:42 For the most part, I feel like the differences have been pretty negligible.

5:45 It's kind of personal preference.

5:47 The monitor on this is considerably brighter

5:51 than the Elgato one, like 50% brighter.

5:53 I know it's hard to tell looking at it,

5:55 the footage in the camera isn't really doing it justice,

5:57 so you're just going to have to trust me.

5:58 The specs on both of these claim that the Elgato

6:00 has 400 nits and the Neewer has 600 nits.

6:04 But I've never really known what to trust because Elgato's Prompter XL also says

6:07 it's 600 nits and I find it to be slightly dimmer than the smaller prompter.

6:12 But regardless, I'd found the Neewer prompter

6:14 to have much brighter whites and more contrast, which made reading text,

6:19 which is kind of what these things are for, a lot easier.

6:21 Another distinction between these two is it feels

6:23 like they were made for a slightly different audience.

6:26 Neewer has made traditional teleprompters before,

6:29 larger ones made for broadcast TV.

6:31 They've got a desktop and a mobile app that let you write

6:33 a script and then automatically scrolls through it as you're reading it.

6:36 Elgato made theirs for content creators, specifically live-streamers in mind,

6:39 which is why it has a dedicated mode for reading live chat of your streams.

6:43 If you wanted to read your live-stream chat on the Neewer teleprompter,

6:46 you can still do that, but you have to pop out

6:48 the chat into a separate window and then full screen it over it.

6:50 And it might not be optimized for reading the same way the Elgato one is.

6:54 But there is also one more interesting advantage of the Neewer one here.

6:57 Because it's a standard monitor, it's not just DisplayLink like the Elgato one,

7:02 you can just plug your phone directly into it and mirror your display.

7:06 You don't have to have an app installed or anything,

7:07 you just plug it in and it mirrors.

7:09 But if you want to go more traditional script style,

7:11 they do have the teleprompter app as well, which is free.

7:15 There's no subscription to it.

7:16 And the rest of the things between these two are pretty similar.

7:18 They both have the exact same size 9-in screen.

7:21 They've both got little cold shoes up on the top

7:23 there for mounting lights or anything that you need.

7:25 And most importantly, when you plug them into a computer,

7:27 they work as separate monitors for that computer,

7:30 so you can really do whatever you want with either of these.

7:33 So, ultimately, those are the trade-offs

7:35 for getting a teleprompter for $80 less.

7:38 I'd love to know what you think

7:40 about those trade-offs and which one you'd prefer.

7:42 I've got my opinions, but I'm going to keep them to myself.

7:44 Personally, I'm just more stoked that there are options.

7:47 I think when you have multiple options, we're the ones who win.

7:50 So, again, I will leave a link to this in the description

7:52 down below with whatever the discount is down there.

7:55 And as always, happy streaming.