Interesting test, I'm not really surprised about the Rode quality, bought that one last year and tried in combination with a Sony minidisk. I placed in on a table during a ceremony and the sound I got from it was really crap. It almost picked up every sound in the neighbourhood and sounded very "hollow". Even a very small Sony handycam I have performs better if you place it in the exact same position (If you plan on using it for sound recordings).