Olympus VN-3600 Digital Voice Recorder

Yes it is a nice and small recorder, and certainly one with the best recording time in it's price. But the Olympus VN-3600 Digital Voice Recorder has a few frustrating flaws.

First of all, forget about using low quality recording. You can hardly make out the voices. You can still get 2.5 hours of decent sound out of it at medium quality. That should be plenty for most users.

What's really driving me crazy is the joint buttons for skipping to the next file and for fast forward. Supposedly, if you hold the button, you'll fast forward, a single push will skip. But since both play/pause, next track, previous track and stop are on jog-dial-style button, you can accidentally press stop when you want to fast forward, or fast forward when you want to pause.

Why is this frustrating? Imagine you have recorded an one hour interview and are listening to it. Accidentally pressing next track or stop will skip you from the current point in the recording to the next track or make it stop. You'll have to fast forward to the point where you ended up. And since FF is really that fast, it take a frustrating amount of time. Seperate buttons for fast forward and fast backward would have solved this issue, although there isn't any space for them on the device (since it's so nice and small...)

Maybe this is less of a problem if you've got small finger, although I don't consider mine to be extrodinarily big.

Had I know about this issue in advance, I definately would have opted for another make/model!

It's very good gadget. Before buying, keep in mind what the use would be. For memos/reminders/thoughs its great, and for lectures/interviews too. You can use the LP mode to have 6 hours available, but I recommend this mode only for memos, or things that you don't need to keep crystal clear; the recordings in LP mode are understandable.

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