Olympus DM-520 Digital Voice Recorder - DM520

I purchased this to download audio books from Audible, since I have not had any good experiences with iPod. This is one of the devices listed on Audible's site as audible ready. Unfortunately, I have been unable to download the audiobooks directly to the Olympus - could be me, my firewalls, I don't know. But I can transfer them from the Media Player very easily. It will play .aa files, which is what audible uses.

Sound quality is AMAZING. My Olympus came with the wrong memory card, but you do not needed it to download files to the device. It takes a MicroSD Card, which you can get at Best Buy for $30 for a 4GB card. Once you insert the card, Olympus will ask if you want to switch to the MicroSD Card or use the internal memory.

Very easy to set up. It will sync up the time and date with your computer. It does have to be turned off for the batteries to charge. I didn't realize this and I was pretty upset when my batteries didn't charge - thought I bought a...Read more

My wife is a journalist and uses the Olympus DM-520 for work. It integrates well with her MacBook Air and my MacBook Pro. The controls are simple to use and understand, and the sound in the file is great when played through your computer (the speakers on the recorder itself are about what you'd expect).
Being able to record in mp3 is a real plus too.