Olympus WS-300M 256 MB Digital Voice Recorder and Music Player by Olympus
|
Our Price: $189.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $44.19 (click here) Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
Digital camera reviews of Olympus WS-300M 256 MB Digital Voice Recorder and Music Player
Digital camera Review: Convenient
Summary: 5 Stars
Although it is light and small, this recorder is very convenient for classes, meetings and conferences. It also works as a USB thumb drive to store data.Digital camera Review: Convenient
Summary: 3 Stars
I like having it, but it's difficult to see the features, and a little more complicated to operate than I expected after reading other rave reviews.Digital camera Review: Convenient pocket-size Digital Voice Recorder with lots of room
Summary: 5 Stars
Out of the box this pocketsize digital voice recorder by Olympus lets you record over 8 hours of material, however you can tweak things to get more juice out of it. Still, if you want to record interviews (for instance) for later semi-professional use (or even re-use, as in the case of an audio podcast) this little one MORE than does the trick. And when you are ready, just plug it into a USB port in your computer and pull the audio files from it much like you would from any other portable storage device.
So far, I've only encountered one "issue" with it (and it's not something you cannot circumvent easily by throwing the files at a file conversion utility). It generates WMA files for every audio track it creates. Since I could care less about these Microsoft audio formats (I prefer my audio tracks to be in MP3 or AAC formats), I ended up tossing the files into iTunes, which did a nice job of converting them back into MP3s. Other than this minor inconvenience, getting this d.v. recorder/player has been nothing but joy!
Update (02/26/2007): I have gotten asked this question a couple of times, so I am posting in here how you go about converting the WMA files to MP3s using iTunes.
1) You drag the files and drop them (literally inside iTunes).
2) You get a screen saying "One or more of the songs you are adding to iTunes... are in the WMA format. iTunes will automatically conver them to the MP3 format so that they can be added to your iTunes library."
3) Past that point, they become available through your library as MP3 files.
Digital camera Review: DVR-could come with more logical instructions
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great product. I use it to tape lectures at school and it records very well.
My only complaint, as with all tech products, is that the instructions arent easy to follow if they even include instructions for the product purchased. How many times have you read the instructions to find out that they pertain to various models, not just the one that you are trying to figure out?
Took me a while to figure it out, and I am still trying to figure out why the recording sometimes stays on the recorder, after I copy it to my computer, and sometimes it just completely goes over to the computer without keeping a copy on the unit.
Digital camera Review: Decent unit for the price
Summary: 3 Stars
Like one of the previous reviewers, I bought this unit for the purpose of recording live music. I am part of a percussion ensemble and I wanted to be able to record our practices.
I played around with the various levels to check out the quality, and it seems to do the best at recording live music on the Stereo HQ setting, or at the minimum- the HQ setting. On ST HQ, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it recorded. It's easy to use and fairly intuitive.
I'm not impressed with the units integrity. It's cheaply made plastic and does not seem to be designed for longevity. The battery door seems as though it would fall off if you sneezed near it, so I placed a piece of masking tape over it just in case. The hold button does not move with an authoritative "click" and it seems as though it could be easily moved if pulled in/out of a purse or pocket if not careful.
I was quite shocked that I had to replace the battery twice over 4 hours of use. I'm fairly certain that the manual started 15 hours of use for 1 AAA battery..... Good thing I brought extras.
The unit wasn't super expensive and it's serving it's purpose. I had looked at practically every digital recorder on the planet before settling on this one. 256MB is a decent amount of space to record, but it would be so much nicer if it would have taken additional memory.
Edited to add: This unit DOES have a Pause Record function.