Philips Speech DVT2050 Philips DVT2050 VoiceTracer Audio Recorder Voice Recorder

At first this little Phillips voice-recorder seemed quite promising. It has several positive features: It's considerably more reasonably priced than the competition (Sony and Olympus). The display is a bit old-school, but I like it, it's clear and provides lots of precise information Similarly the controls are a bit old-school, but I like buttons and the control-ring, prefer them to fake touch-screen controls 8gb internal memory with the option of adding a 32gb microsd card A selection of recording qualities including WAV lossless and three levels of MP3 The noise reduction feature really seems to work Rechargeable battery I need ready-made folders, different folders for different subjects. I want to be able to select a folder, then press the record button to record a note. No fuss. This machine does offer four folders (but only four, and apparently no option to create more). And in an age when manuals are perfunctory or non-existent, I really appreciated the lucid and informative manual. (Comes on the machine, but you have to download it to your computer.) But: I had doubts about durability, the little recorder feels light and plasticky. The on-off slide in particular looks like it’s going to fall off any minute. There is a significant amount of lag between pressing the record button and the start of recording. If you press the button and start to speak you will miss the first few words. Just two settings for the microphone sensitivity, high and low. And with the machine set on low you have to hold the recorder almost to your lips to get any volume at all on the replay, even with the play-back volume cranked right up. And adjusting the recording sensitivity setting required burrowing deep into a menu, not something you could do on the fly. In fact, the external speaker seems generally feeble. Didn’t try the radio, don’t know how well it would work. Almost seems like the designers intended the machine to be used with earphones (provided), which doesn’t really suit my needs. Similarly deleting a file is incredibly cumbersome, burrowing into a menu, four separate buttons to delete a single file. I want to press a button to delete, be asked if that’s what I want, then press the same button to complete the operation I dislike having to press a separate button to stop recording. Why couldn’t another press of the “record” button stop the recording? And though the machine may have two microphones, says so on the case, it doesn't record in stereo unless you connect an external microphone (not included). So, it's going back.

Wonderful

It works great.

Vraiment très contente, facile à utiluser

High quality recording, sensitive stereo mic, basic simple settings. Highly recommended.