Olympus - Digital Voice Recorder WS-300 Review

For over thirty years I have been an amateur voice recording archivist, compelled to record voices of family members, family history information, even reading entire books on tape for my mother when she lost her sight,  If only I would have had this little gem when these people were alive.

This is the third digital voice recorder I have owned, the other two failing me miserably.  It works as advertised, with no hissing of "S's" and placement of the mic controls puffing of "P's" and "B's".  Yes, you can add an external mic, even an over-the-head mic/earphone combination so you don't even have to hold the little tiny machine.  It only uses one AAA battery.  I use rechargeables.

My favorite features: 

1) easy to learn control buttons - I can't see the small print without glasses.  They are simple, straight forward in their function.  Seldom used functions are in the menu items, like turning on/off the variable controlled voice actuator, setting date and time, mic sensitivity, recording modes. 

2) USB connection to my laptop-it works like a flash drive (the battery compartment is removed to reveal the USB connector) so file saving and sharing are easy.  I use Dragon Naturally Speaking for conversion of voice to text and this process is extremely smooth.  When I want to save the recording in voice format, I import it to iTunes, where the WMA file is converted to MP3. 

3) Five folders with up to 199 files in each, you can work on multiple projects without too much mixing and sorting of files.  Size will vary according to memory capacity.  I download frequently so purchased the lower end WS-300M which has 256MB; the WS-310M holds 512MB and the WS-320M holds 1 GB.  I figure that even if I used it while traveling, I could email files to myself from an Internet cafe and then make more space, but I'm not a journalist or song writer and will never fill my WS300M even in a month of traveling.

4) Playback allows 1 fast and 1 slow speed playback.  This is great for me since I speak more slowly than I can listen.  I love to hear myself speaking quickly and can review my words that much faster.

5) The real kicker here has to be the price-I shopped the Internet and found it for $86.  I think I ended up paying a little higher, $89 ,since I found it from a retailer that participated in Mileage Mall, giving me double airline miles.  I also saw the WS-300M on the rack at both Office Depot and Office Max for $99.  I almost bought another one, but considering the absolute portability and expandability of the product, just carry a spare AAA; why would I need two?

6)  Did I mention it is also an MP3 player - for my needs, I don't think I will ever have to buy another iPod - with creative use, it could almost replace my PDA--all for under $100.