Olympus WS-400 S Digital Recorder (White)

My colleague and I compared notes on the Olympus WS-400 versus the Sony ICD-UX71 digital voice recorders for use by our undergraduate social science students, and here's a copy of what we agreed on:

Both the Sony and the Olympus have nearly identical features:
- 1GB storage
- stereo microphones
- USB direct connect
- 1 AAA battery
- about 2 seconds to start up

The Sony creates MP3 files, and the Olympus creates WMA files, but this is not a big problem for Mac users, since many of us have the free Flip4Mac download that automatically converts WMA files for Apple Quicktime player.

I think that the Olympus WS-400 is a better product for student interviewing, for the following reasons:

1) the Olympus has fewer buttons, and better placement of them

2) when you record on the Olympus, you can see the input sound levels on little bar charts, which confirms it's actually working

3) the...Read more

I've owned the similar WS-500 recorder for a long time, using it mostly for interviews. It's far and away the best DVR I've ever owned. Very simple to use, decent battery life (love that it can recharge through USB port while plugged in), good mic pickup, super-easy file transfer with built-in USB dongle. It's even better when used with the small Olympus noise-cancelling mic.

As previous reviewers have noted, this recorder has some clear advantages over the Sony UX71. It's much more intuitive to operate, and better built. But the main advantage is battery life: The UX71, which I unfortunately bought, routinely kills a battery in one day, even when set to "hold." It's worthless, and Sony hasn't been too anxious to do a thing about it, beyond offering exchange for a refurb (I suspect its endemic with the model, and haven't bothered.) I was a Sony user for a long time, but no more.

The sole advantage to the Sony, in my mind, was the fact that it records in MP3...Read more

If your an occasional user of digital voice recorders, this is a great product and you will likely be very happy with it. I "upgraded" my VN-4100PC to this unit because of the lack of Vista 64 support on the VN-4100 PC, I still was able to offload audio using VMWare with a XP image.

The device is a lot larger in terms of audio storage than my VN-4100 PC, I went from 24hrs to 70hrs with HQ mode (highest quality non-stero mode). On lower quality you can get 250+ hours, but I find HQ is best because you are better able to understand what you are recording.

I use the devices two ways, one way is very difficult with this device and is the primary way I use it. The other way, the device works perfectly and well suited for this task.

I will frequently record phone calls with a TP7 telephone recorder (very cheap mic that records both sides of the conversation). For this task, the WS-400S is excellent, the recording time and quality works perfectly...Read more