digital voice recorders

I bought one of these probably a year or two ago and at the time the 150 minute capacity far exceeded any others in the price range. I purchased it specifically for doing mystery shopping evaluations and it has worked well for this task about 80% of the time... occasionally there is just too much background noise to hear what's being said. However, I normally keep the recorder hidden in a jacket pocket or in a pocket in my wife's purse, and it still does a decent job! I especially like the real-time clock (so I know the exact date and time of the recording) although it would be nice to have a seconds counter. (The elapsed time counter will show seconds but the clock does not.) Battery life is good but nowhere near the 10 hours of recording life listed. Buy some rechargeable AAAs, you'll need 'em. Extremely small and lightweight. The mic jack is a nice feature but I've never used it because I don't have a mic to fit!

I am truly disappointed by the quality of this product, coming from Sony. Usually Sony has reasonably good products, but this one really is a piece of trash. It is advertised as a recorder for lectures and meetings, and as a college student, I thought this could help me take better notes. Wrong!!! This recorder can only take sound straight from your mouth into the mic at close range, but if you are interested in anything other than your own voice, you're out of luck with this model. I tried it out in one of my classes - a class held in a small room with no windows in the basement of a library (don't get quieter than that!!) and the recorder managed to garble every word of the professor, while picking up an amazing amount of roaring noise which is apparently either above or below the human hearing level, since it seems to not exist in the real world! Sony should be ashamed!! Please, if you intend to buy a recorder for lectures or meetings, don't buy this one!

The product, by itself, is so-so. It has adequate battery life and recording time. But its recording sound quality may sometimes be unsatisfactory. However, if you attach an external mic phone instead of its built mic, it gets much better. I think it's good enough for light users.