Sony ICD-SX57 Digital Voice Recorder with 256 MB Built-in Flash Memory and USB

I've been searching forever for an easy-to-use, reliable digital voice recorder to record sermons and other events for our church to podcast. Finally picked up one of these this week, and was thrilled with its easy operation and terrific recording quality in a few short tests. Today it also came through its first full-length sermon recording with flying colors. Looked like a total winner.

Then I came home, connected it to the computer, downloaded and edited the file, and left it connected for a couple of hours while I did some other work at my desk. After a while, I heard an odd fizzing sound. By the time I looked over to see what was making it, the sound had disappeared. Happened two more times. Finally, I touched the recorder to move it out of the way to get something else, and discovered it was blazing hot. I immediately yanked it off the USB cable and moved it off the papers it had been sitting on. Then I noticed a bluish-green drop of goo where the device had been sitting. After letting it "cool" for about 10 minutes (during which it actually stayed amazingly hot), I was able to touch it with bare fingers and I pulled out the batteries. They were very gooey and the paint on the labels had liquified.

Not a good sign for a brand new device. And, yes, I was using the Sony batteries that came packaged with the recorder, so there's no chance I used the wrong kind.

I'd love to give this thing five stars for the recording quality, size, ease of use, user interface and all those very good things. But it definitely gets a 0 for safety (can't imagine what might have happened if I hadn't been sitting there when it started to sizzle), and that's got to trump all else can't burn down the house or church for the sake of a nice, crisp recording.

Addendum: The recorder comes with two non-rechargeable Sony AAA batteries. The instruction book warns you to make sure the batteries are installed before connecting it to the computer with the USB cable. But using the supplied non-rechargeable batteries while the device is connected causes the batteries to explode. (It has actually happened twice to me now I tried it again a week after the incident described above, and the same thing happened...in less than 20 minutes.) I tried connecting it to the computer a third time, however, with NO batteries installed, and it worked fine...despite the instructions to the contrary in the manual. Also, I would presume that using rechargeable batteries would be a good alternative, since it's likely the non-rechargeables are exploding because the recorder is trying to charge them through the USB cable. The recorder does have a setting that allows you to turn off the battery charge function while the device is connected to the USB cable...but while this seems like a good solution, when I tried it with the non-rechargeable batteries, the computer didn't recognize the device when it was connected. So the best, safest option seems to be using nothing but rechargeable batteries...and keeping non-rechargeables away from the thing at all costs.

I want to recommend the Sony ICD-SX57 to anyone who needs a small high quality voice recorder. The recording ability is excellent, size and shape are perfect and High Quality Stereo recording time is four hours. There is one issue to be aware of. The unit comes with non-rechargable batteries but is set to "CHARGE" batteries when connected to USB, as a default setting. This will probably cause the batteries to melt and ruin the unit as another reviewer discovered. Navigate the menu and change the USB to "NOT CHARGE" if you are using non-rechargable batteries, before connecting to a USB port. As a voice recorder the Sony ICD-SX57 far exceeded my expatations.

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Just bought this and it's been great so far. Still playing around with the settings. Love the wav and mp3 file formats. Software is very easy to use. The stereo mic(s) do a great job...sounds almost the same as

with my external mic!

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I love this recorder. I use it in conjunction with my dragon NaturallySpeaking, and it seems to work very well.

The product was actually delivered quicker than I expected.

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I should have known. I read a lot or reviews and this seemed to be the product for me. The description says it supports wav and mp3 formats. Problem is you have to run the software on a PC to get that to happen. The msv file format is not compatible with a Mac. Looks like this is going back.