In the final working hour of Halloween 2025, the UK’s biggest and most popular YouTube group, The Sidemen, urgently required 30 (yes 30) Deity PR-2 pocket recorders. However, with it being post cut-off for orders in the Netherlands to be processed, and nobody holding 30 units in stock in the UK, the pressure was on for the Sidemen. With a Sidemen Sunday shoot on Wednesday, urgent action was required.
The weekend had passed, and we could now expedite the order to the UK on a next-day delivery. However, the Sidemen sent a colleague to Amsterdam on a same-day return flight to pick-up the 30 PR-2s and bring them back in their cabin baggage. After communication back and forth, they put their trust in Deity to be able to deliver the units by Tuesday afternoon via our excellent preferred courier. Come Tuesday, beads of sweat dripped off the foreheads of the Logistics department. Anything could go wrong… But it didn’t. The Sidemen received the 30 PR-2s and used them the following day, replacing their legacy pocket recorders that they’d used for years.
This isn’t the first Deity product the Sidemen have upgraded to, though. For months now, the production team have used our TC-1 timecode generators on their cameras. Now with the pairing of the PR-2 and TC-1, the Sidemen post-production team have vastly improved their workflow, allowing the team to edit their videos quicker and work on the next one thanks to the Deity ecosystem.
The Deity PR-2
The Sidemen aren’t the first YouTubers to put their trust in the PR-2. With its lightweight design, YouTubers across the world are using the PR-2 for their productions. The 30 hours of battery life, allows YouTubers to have their recorder running all day on two AA batteries, minimising stoppages in recording. On top of that, multiple television and film productions are also using the PR-2 on set, especially in plant mic situations such as inside the visor of a moving vehicle.
The PR-2 supports both 24-bit and 32-bit float recording formats, allowing you to achieve perfect gain and staging, and along with the TC-1 wireless timecode sync, you can easily add timecode metadata to your WAV files of the PR-2.
Like the majority of Deity products, our Sidus Audio app allows wireless remote control of the PR-2 from up to 250ft away, removing the the hassle from having to handle products and stopping recording.
Who are the Sidemen?
With over 22 million subscribers on their main channel, Simon, JJ, Tobi, Ethan, Josh, Vik and Harry are Britain’s most popular YouTube group. With a video on their main channel being released every Sunday (Sidemen Sundays), a subscription channel (Sidemen+), a second, third and fourth channel (MoreSidemen, Sidemen Reacts, Sidemen Shorts), and individual channels, the group constantly produces professional videos every few days.
The group also had their popular Big Brother style reality show, Inside, streamed on Netflix as well as a documentary about the group back in 2024. The group are more than just YouTubers, they’re entrepreneurs. Their collective catalogue includes Sidemen Clothing, XIX Vodka, Sides Snacks, Best Cereal, a restaurant, an annual football charity match, and a venture capital. Moreover, the individual members also have their own ventures such as KSI’s (JJ) Prime drinks brand that he started with fellow YouTuber Logan Paul.
You can watch the Sidemen use the PR-2 here: