SAIMPU Digital Voice Recorder 8gb Dictaphone with Mp3 Player Spy Recorder Voice Activated Recorder for Lectures, Professional Noise Reduction Rechargeable Recording Device

I am a little hard of hearing so I purchased this for two uses:1. A training course I was attending - I wanted to record each session and concentrate on the coursework in front of me rather than trying to work out what was being said by the tutor and other students - the battery lasted all day every day and picked up every scrap of conversation. So worked superbly and I have every session recorded should I want to go back over details at a later date.2. For recording voice notes when gathering information and details for writing. For this purpose it is perfect. the unit is small enough to fit in any pocket, comes with a carry case is easily accessible.To me this is an invaluable tool that costs so little, it was a bargain and great value for money.

I bought this WITH TREPIDATION, I don't like the lack of EASY TO USE DEVICES, AND INSTRUCTION LEAFLETS THAT ARE IN 'TECHSPEAK' I'm sorry to see that at the moment this is no longer available..IT IS EXCELLENT..EASY TO SET UP...Instructions for those of us who don't do TECHSPEAK..BELIEVE ME when I say: " If I can follow it, ANYONE CAN!" I really don't do technology, its not that I hate it for itself, but because getting something set up and working usually takes me hours, and, more often than not, I don't get the thing to work as it should! But this was a 'dream', for me..PROS...It really is EASY TO FOLLOWIt is of SOLID CONSTRUCTIONIt seems to pick up from a distancePlayback is really good..you can actually hear it without using the earphonesCONS: I haven't found any YET...I was even able to read the instructions without a MAGNIFYING GLASS, or even my specs...I would prefer an enlarged version, to make it even easier, and I suppose I'll be able to get one of those?EXCLLENT PRODUCT, QUICK RESPONSE FROM THE SELLER when I needed to ask for advice..for the sake of others needing one of these, I bought mine to record lectures, I hope they go back on sale again....sooon

Ok.....I'm not going to judge this against my Zoom h4n or mixing desk, and nor should you. I will update on application uses when my singing groups come back after christmas.1. What can it do?On minor testing it can record an instrument and a vocal, near or at range. You won't be recording an album on it, but it's completely functional as a quick capture device. Quicker than using a mid range phone and acceptable sound quality. Can it record a band or choir? Yes, probably an acoustic band....choirs, maybe at about 50 - 60 ft. I will check it, but I'm pretty confident it's a question of room and placement.It would be totally suitable to do what it's really designed for....recording meetings or lectures at distance. There is no question it can do that.2. What's the audio quality like?It's passable. There is enough background noise to be irritating, but for what it is it's fine. The device itself could do a better job with a firmware update.....it's going to capture the mid range, but I doubt the microphone is going to handle great highs or lows. Functionally, it's a low end smartphone recording quality....which isn't terrible. It will do a more complete job than a cheap smartphone in terms of range, but the audio will be nothing special.3. Is it junk?No. For under £30 it's great. I wanted something small that was quick point and shoot. I didn't expect anything amazing, but it's well made and it's ideal for recording meetings. For anything else you will need to make it work. It's something I could hand to someone and explain how to use it in less than 45 seconds.4. Improvements?Biggest one would have to be a firmware update to include some level of control over mic sensitivity. It would solve the sound quality issues and make it substantially more diverse. Nobody is going to do that with this particular device, but if the next version of the hardware that's released had that, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, even at £15 -£20 more. I work as a singing leader....there are people in my sector crying out for someting as well designed and easy to use as this. I'm quite good with tech, but if I handed my main recorder to another singing leader 90% of them would give up trying to use it in seconds. This type of device is the way forward, it just needs refining. For most people, this is near perfect....it's so close to where the tech needs to be it could take the market share overnight with one or two upgrades in microphones and firmware. I know it's not really meant for music, but it could easily be made to work for that purpose.5. Should you buy it?Yes....you should buy it and feed back to the company how to make it better. £22 for it's basic purpose is incredible value. The headphones are not too bad and the bag is worth £2 of anyones money. As an mp3 player it would be easily worth £20, it's a really good thing and I want to see what they come out with next

The media could not be loaded. Very easy to us and allows both Wav and MP3 format, small enough to fit in pocket and no rattling buttons like other recorder. I love the colour display and the layout of the buttons, both no and off and record buttons are at the side where you have to slide it to activate. This prevent a lot of accidental recording while in pocket etc.Transferring the files to PC is easy , just plug in the included cable and it show up as an external drive once you select charge and transfer files as the option on the recorder. Overall the built quality is excellent, feels like a metal body with minimal rattling noise which does not pick up by the mic.I will be using this a lot with my 360 camera as most of the camera built in mic will not be good enough, I would be happy to use this instead once you put a sock over it to prevent wind noise.

I'm not sure how to get hold of the seller but I'm having issues with the recorder a few times I've found all the recordings deleted

This is NOT a stereo recorder. I checked the audio track in my audio editor and it had 2 mono channels. The level of the track was very low although the level of noise was very high. It also not delivering 20-20KHZ as described. Barely a half of that. A waste of money for me.

I bought this device to use it to record interviews and memos as part of a documentary project on which I'm working; these interviews are then transcribed. It's an excellent little device. Battery life so far has been superb. (It's not run out of charge in the field.) The 8Gb of capacity is more than enough for my needs, recording a couple of hours of audio. It's portable - not much bigger than my camera battery, as a matter of fact, so fits nicely into my camera bag. (As someone who hasn't used a discrete dictaphone/voice recorder since the analogue days - when they were h-u-g-e, this is a big bonus.) The quality of the recording surprised me: it was much better than I expected for such an inexpensive device. I can fully recommend it. I'm very pleased with my purchase.