Olympus WS-510M 4GB Digital Voice Recorder and WMA/MP3 Music Player

Comment: Small package, lots of features, easy to use and great recording quality. Would purchase again in a heartbeat.

Comment: Great product. Extremely happy with the sound quality. My only gripe is with the battery indicator. It had indicated I had two bars left and then suddenly I no longer had battery. As long as you ensure the battery is charged, this is a great find for the money!

Comment:
I've used a Olympus 4100 PCfor several years - excellent. I bought the 510 for the extra features. Found it too complicated to use with poor audio quality. It attempts to be a mini audio studio in too small a package. Decided to stick with the 4100, which creates audio programs with excellent clarity and ease of use.

Comment: When I first got my Olympus I loved it. It is small and lightweight enough to fit perfectly in my shirt pocket, which I often do to record myself giving speeches for self-evaluation. I loved the rechargeable battery, back-lit screen, 4 GB of memory, and pop-out USB connector. And the learning curve to use it was not too bad. However, as I began to use it for the purpose for which I bought it, the playback sound quality was not good at all. I tried every quality and mic sensitivity setting, and nothing produced a quality nearly as good as what I was used to with my 5-year old Sony that had died. I even tried downloading the firmware that allows for recording in MP3 format instead of WMA, and the playback quality was worse. Plus, with MP3 recording, all of the quality setting options were no longer available. As much as I liked this product for the reasons first stated, I returned it because I was unable to secure a decent recording with the recorder in my shirt pocket. I continued to look and research because I still needed to replace my dead Sony. I ended up buying a Sony ICD-PX820 from Best Buy, which I have used for about a week now and absolutely love. It only has 2 GB of memory instead of 4, but that still gives me 24 hours of recording time on the highest quality setting. (More than enough for me.) It is slightly larger than the Olympus, but is still very small, light weight, and pocket sized. The tiny buttons and controls of the Olympus were not a problem for me, but the larger controls on the Sony are nicer. The Sony's batteries are not built-in rechargeables, but battery life is good and you can buy AAA rechargeable batteries if that is an issue. I wish the Sony's screen was back-lit, but that is not a major issue for me. It is also nice that the Sony records everything in the more versatile MP3 format by default. But here is the MAJOR issue for me - the quality of recording is wonderful! And the Sony sold for about $30 less than the Olympus. I should have bought the Sony from the beginning. I might have kept the Olympus if I had not had the old Sony to compare the playback quality to. I would not recommend this Olympus. Anyone who buys the Sony needs to pay attention to the model. If you want to download recorded files to your computer (which I do), make sure you get the 820 model.

Comment: I purchased this to record meetings. My intention later evolved to recording meetings and phone sessions with my coach. The resulting recordings are very pleasing. The built in USB jack turn out to be very helpfull when transferring the data to my laptop.

I was concerned about working with the buttons with my large fingers. However, after using the recorder for a few days I discovered that my fingers easily operated the features available nicely.

The ability to record for many hours has benifited me many times! Currently the memory capacity has enabled a recoring of any length that has suited my fancy.

I hope this review helps others!