COBY CXR188 IC Digital Voice Recorder

This is my first digital voice recorder(Coby CXR118 IC) and I'm deeply disappointed with it. I was expecting the recording quality of that of my camcorder. The reason I bought this is for the price and PC interface capability. This is the worst product anyone can make. The recording quality is so horrible I cannot recognize my own words after recording with microphone close to your mouth. Menu selection is poorly designed and the user manual is for COBY's Techies. DON'T EVEN CONSIDER THIS PRODUCT. It does not record voice, it records NOISE.

I bought the CX-R188 primarily for the ability to tranfer recordings to my computer. The software did not work. I was not able to transfer files of more than a few minutes in length. I tried the software on multiple computers with no success. Other than this flaw (which was significant for me), the product seems to work OK.

I just got a new unit yesterday for my college courses. The recording time, advertised 90min/up to 4hrs, is only about 45 minutes in SP mode and 3 hrs. 50 minutes in LP. The quality in long play mode is fairly good - you can understand speech (there is a little warbling) - but unsuitable for music. The SP mode is good for music though. With the software, you can convert between SP/LP files and .wav or .mp3. There are some other nice features like being able to repeat segments of files (for lectures, learning languages?), VOX and sensitive mike settings. Along on the CD (a bonus?) are some Chinese language/English files. Might be useful toward learning Chinese - can't say - but there are quite a few files. The software works with my Windows XP. The manual is useful; although it's just basic. It looks like the unit might have come out in 1997. I think it's good for the price and my needs.