 "If you're buying this in hopes of using it for class lecture... well..." | 2009-12-30 |
| - Reviewed By Charlie Chen from Los Angeles, CA |
You're lying to yourself. Either that, or you're much more persistent than I.
Anywho, I bought this product from Amazon almost 2 years ago with goals of being more... present in class lectures. In other words, I slept in class. Okay that's a lie, I didn't go to class. The flaw with my plan is that, well, without the lecturer and the black/white board, it's extremely hard to follow voice alone. When the professor says "this is very important" and you hear a thwack against the board, you know you're screwed. So I've spent $100+ to fail college. Now flunked out of college, I live in a well furnished alley under a 12-story brick red apartment and have three wives with 14 kids. In my spare time, I still use the voice record to pretend-play Detective Maza with aforementioned 14 kids.
Tangent aside, the product is great. Sound quality is great, though I wouldn't try using it as an MP3 player. There's definitely some "hint" of surround sound, but that could be placebo. Built-in speakers produce ample amount of sound for private use, with great quality for its size, though again, I wouldn't try using it as an MP3 player. The battery base slides off to reveal a sleek USB plug, no extra cords. Speaking of cords, there's a small indentation thing on the back of the recorder where you can attach a string, and subsequently a keychain/necklace/bracelet/whatever.
Battery life is extremely good, it lasted probably a year personally, on one AAA battery. But again, I hardly used it during that time, so most of that was drained. There's a Stereo Extra-High Quality (STXQ) mode, but for the most part, sounds no different from the standard HQ mode. There is some noticeable difference when using the voice filter though, it definitely cuts down the ambient sounds. Product feels solid and looks solid, and has been solid so far. |
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| "Spectacular Recorder" | 2009-11-30 |
| - Reviewed By Jim Kosmo |
| As a writer/author this incredible, matchbox recorder has beocme my best friend. It is excellent for interviews and even better when recording speakers, even in large meeting halls. The sound quality is well beyond expectation. I don't know how I worked so many years without it. |
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| "Practical buys." | 2009-09-23 |
| - Reviewed By Emily A. Cox from Burlington, VT USA |
I love amazon; don't get me wrong, but if you're going to purchase this, you can get it for $99.00 + free shipping BRAND NEW from Office Max. Visit their website. I think we should all be able to save money and get a high-quality product.
Good luck! |
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 "Disappointed" | 2009-03-05 |
| - Reviewed By Jim Stanley from League City, TX United States |
| I am very happy with the WS-311M except for one very serious problem, battery life. The LED shows full battery, but the recorder will fail showing "system check". Replace the battery and it's okay. No reliable indication of battery life. |
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| "If you are a PICKY musian type, then READ this, ignore the rest!" | 2009-02-26 |
| - Reviewed By kayordic |
| I will make this as short as possible for other very picky musician types. I drove myself crazy trying to decide what to buy, I finally decided on this recorder and I am incredibly pleased. Anyone who says negative things about it probably doesn't have the patience to read the manual. The built-in mics are very good, enough to CLEARLY record ideas, music or interviews etc., but if you use something like a Sony ECM-MS907 mic you will be totally blown away, I am not kidding. The sampling rate is 44.1 khz on the highest setting (which I have not even used yet, but yes, it's THAT good) which is CD quality (in theory). In practice, because it compresses the files, it's not CD but it's very, very good. BTW, with a good mic, the background noise or 'hiss' is pretty much nil, (the built-in mics are a bit more noisy but easily tolerable) quite amazing. With a good mic, you could take this to a club or record your band and it would be extremely good quality. If I were to go up to what I felt is the next level, I would buy the ZOOM H4 which costs quite a bit more but looks amazing. For the bucks though, this unit is excellent. Again, don't be scared off by negative comments. It is very easy to use but you should really take about 30 minutes to 1 good hour to read the manual. The negatives are that 1)I can't record line-in from like a stereo mini-plug, seems to be some annoying impedance problem (overloading) so if you want to record the radio, you'll have to set it in front of your blaster or speakers to record whatever show which kind of sucks. 2) The headphone output volume could be louder but considering the size, hey... 3)It is VERY small (3 and 3/4"H X 1 and 1/2"W X 3/8"D) You'll be shocked at how small it is. It's like it was designed by elves so everything is painfully small - you get used to it but if your vision is not 20-20, you'll need your reading glasses to use it but then everything is like that these days but I aint kidding, this thing is TINY. |
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| "Digital recorder" | 2009-01-21 |
| - Reviewed By An Amazon User |
| Excellent. Works great. Used it for all my classes during last sememster and will be this semester. Would highly recommend it to others. |
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