Olympus VN-1000 Digital Voice Recorder

EXTRA UNADVERTISED INFO regarding the Olympus VN-1000: You can play/feed your digital voice files to your computer by separately purchasing an inexpensive generic 1/4" male to 1/4" male audio cable: Plug one end of the cable into the voice recorder's ear phone port and plug the other end to your PC's microphone port. Similarly, you can play your digital voice files through your stereo system if your equipment has an auxillary port.

I played with this model and the Olympus VN-960PC at an office supply store. The speaker on this model sounded much better than the 960. It is definitely much clearer with less distortion. The only real difference I could make out from the box, was the USB capability and Voice activation recording. I dunno if voice activation is useful or not but I would have liked the USB function. But I really didn't feel like paying $21 for that one function. They both record up to 16 hours in LP mode, so I think the recording times for SP and HQ mode is the same regardless of the amount of memory in each device.

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I traded in my micro-cassette because the tapes could only be used once so I was spending just as much on tapes as I would if I just broke down and spent a little extra on a digital. I am so glad I did! The sound quality is amazing, and it is super small, and light. I use it to record my college lectures, it is amazing. It has four folders to store your files, and you can store them by date too. If you are fed up with your micro-cassette I would highly recommend this to you!

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This is one of the cheapest voice recorders, and it delivers! I think it would be good for any use such as school, interviews, etc. It has hours of recording time, which I don't think I need that much, but you can also index your recordings so it's easy to go back to a certain spot you want to remember.

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I purchased this to record a series of interviews. At top quality it allows 3 hours of recording, at mid level it was 7 and at lowest quality it said there was 13 hours of recording time. I set it for middle quality and it did great. It clearly recorded the interviewees' voices, though in one instance it also picked up a television in another room. You need to point the top of the recorder directly at the subject you are trying to record to keep background noise from overpowering the recording. It can pick up a conversation from a pant pocket, though it will be a little faint.

I skipped on the manual due to length but it only took maybe 10 minutes of fidgeting with the thing to figure out most of it's capabilities. It is definitely easy to use and is so small no one was distracted by it ... it could easily be mistaken for a cell phone. The digital display is useful and easy to understand.

2 draw backs and these could be rectified by spending a little more money on the next level up of this device.

1 the indexing funtion only allows ten indexes per recording. For interviews that were over an hour long this was NOT enough indexes.

2 I did not think the lack of USB connection would bother me, but after having transcribed the interviews I do wish I could have played it straight from the computer instead of having to constantly go back to the device to pause, back up and go forward.

Overall the device does exactly what it describes, and does it well. But I think some will find they prefer a few more options in their recorder.