Olympus WS-321M Digital Voice Recorder and WMA Music Player

I have been using mini cassette recorders, digital voicepens, and PDAs to record lectures and my own thoughts for years. This one blows them all away, in terms of both usability and sound quality. It is my first Olympus, and it is clearly the product of generations of improvements they made. I have not bought a gadget in a long time that keeps giving me GOOD surprises instead of disappointments. Worries that a recording will be lost because the battery ran out during a recording are eliminated by the fact that: 1. there is a nice battery indicator that you can check before beginning. 2. It uses one AAA, which is easy to find anywhere, and easy to carry a spare. if you see the battery is low, just pause the recording, put it on Hold, and put in a new battery. 3. The battery lasts over 8 hours anyway. How many recordings require continuous 8 hours? That sure beats fumbling with the old 30-min minicassettes! The stereo internal mic is superb, even at the medium quality setting. The...Read more

I ordered the Olympus WS-321 for two reasons: one as a Mac owner I wanted a voice recorder that would easily interface with my Mac. The Olympus WS-321 does that just fine and I can also download the files to my PC. Reason 2: it's size. I use it to record my singing at our chorus rehearsals - the Olympus WS-321 slips into my back pocket; don't need audio tapes. I then email the MP3 file to my section leader for her to review after I've reviewed it myself. I've used the Olympus WS-321 for about a month now. It's doing just what I purchased it for.

I love this little recorder. I have had it about 4 weeks now, and it has been great. I was surprised at how good the built in microphone is and how well it picks up voices from recording a dictation to recording a lecture in a big hall. As expected, the built in speaker is not all that great, but once you plug in the ear phones, the sound is great.

It has a lot of good features, but you can read about them in the specs.

I would buy it again.