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Sony ICDUX80 Digital Voice Recorder with MP3 Stereo Recording and Playback
See it at Amazon.com for $145.22Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
A Good All Purpose Voice Recorder
(4 out of 5) by David J. Hedwall on Jul 12, 2008 (Los Angeles, Calif.)I purchased the Sony ICDUX80 Digital Voice Recorder mainly to do voice-over work for the videos I make for YouTube. My computer's built-in mic pics up the noise from the on-board fan, etc. so I decided to get a compact voice recorder.
The SONY was pretty much what I was looking for as far as features and price... plus I have always had great success with SONY equipment. Here are some of mike Pros & Cons:
PROS: Small, compact and easy to carry in a shirt pocket. Good Amazon price. Stereo mp3 files. USB direct plug to go into my Mac. Lots of drive space for the files. Easy to read menus.
CONS: Small, compact size.... I have fairly large hands and it is sometimes clumsy to navigate the menus with such small buttons. Audio quality was not quite what I expected -- even in the highest recording quality. There is a fair amount of "hiss".... something I would expect from an analogue voice recorder... but from a digital one? Also if you speak too closely to the mic, you will get "pop" -- when you pronounce your "P"'s. I have a tendency to over-enunciate when I do my voice-overs, so I had to learn to back off the mic a bit so as not to over-drive the mics.
All in all, I would give the Sony ICDUX80 Digital Voice Recorder 4 Stars
The SONY was pretty much what I was looking for as far as features and price... plus I have always had great success with SONY equipment. Here are some of mike Pros & Cons:
PROS: Small, compact and easy to carry in a shirt pocket. Good Amazon price. Stereo mp3 files. USB direct plug to go into my Mac. Lots of drive space for the files. Easy to read menus.
CONS: Small, compact size.... I have fairly large hands and it is sometimes clumsy to navigate the menus with such small buttons. Audio quality was not quite what I expected -- even in the highest recording quality. There is a fair amount of "hiss".... something I would expect from an analogue voice recorder... but from a digital one? Also if you speak too closely to the mic, you will get "pop" -- when you pronounce your "P"'s. I have a tendency to over-enunciate when I do my voice-overs, so I had to learn to back off the mic a bit so as not to over-drive the mics.
All in all, I would give the Sony ICDUX80 Digital Voice Recorder 4 Stars
41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
The First Pocket-Sized mp3 Recorder Suitable for Live Music
(5 out of 5) by Epicure on Apr 13, 2008 (USA)This remarkable little mp3 recorder is by no means just a voice recorder--it makes excellent, high-quality recordings of live music--an absolute first for any device this small. The built-in stereo mics are not bad for what they are, but when I plugged in my little SONY electret condenser mic I produced recordings of essentially the same quality as I got with my very much larger and very cheesily-made EDIROL R1 PRO at 3 times the price.
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
Not worth it
(1 out of 5) by Ed A. Ogle on Jan 11, 2009 (Loveland, CO USA)I purchased my ICDUX80 from Amazon. There were a lot of positive reviews for this product. I planned to use this recorder in my business and for a class I was taking at the time. Here is a list of the problems I had: 1) It uses 1 AAA battery. It only last a couple of hours at most. You need to keep changing batteries for long meetings. 2) This is my biggest problem. When recording where the sound level is low this recorder produces strange whistling sounds in the background of the recording. I recognized these sounds as MP3 recording artifacts from low quality recording. I thought the recorder was defective so I called Sony Support. The guy I talked to agreed and I sent it in for repair. However they sent it back and it had the same problem. I really don't think they did any repair at all. In the end I just sold the one I had on eBay to get rid of it. I felt as though I had been ripped-off given how much this unit cost. I am eventually going to replace this unit, but at this point I don't know what I will get.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
A Great Step . . .
(4 out of 5) by Greg Conquest on May 10, 2008 (Japan)The ICD-UX80 I have is great. The others have mentioned recording quality. It records at 192kbps in top quality. The mics work fine for me, except in the wind . . .
The drawbacks, though:
1) the buttons get pressed easily while in my bag. This records bag noise for hours . . . or plays nothing for hours . . . Either way, it does run the battery down often requiring a reset of the date and time when a new battery is installed. (You do have time to change batteries normally without losing date and settings, but this isn't the case when the unit has no battery capacity for hours . . .) It really needs a case.
2) The record button is just as small as the other buttons; it is also almost the same size as the adjacent round speaker casing. An oversized record button would make it easier to start without looking . . .
The drawbacks, though:
1) the buttons get pressed easily while in my bag. This records bag noise for hours . . . or plays nothing for hours . . . Either way, it does run the battery down often requiring a reset of the date and time when a new battery is installed. (You do have time to change batteries normally without losing date and settings, but this isn't the case when the unit has no battery capacity for hours . . .) It really needs a case.
2) The record button is just as small as the other buttons; it is also almost the same size as the adjacent round speaker casing. An oversized record button would make it easier to start without looking . . .
32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent for Recording Classes or Meetings
(5 out of 5) by David Austen on Apr 6, 2008 (Palo Alto, CA USA)This Sony recorder is what I had been hoping for. I use it for recording my evening classes, two hours at a shot. The format is .mp3, so that Windows Media Player immediately starts playback with a mouse click, with no format conversion. The built-in USB connection makes it seem like a flash drive. The stereo sound is excellent. It uses a single AAA battery, rechargeable in my case. The control buttons are spread out, not "multi-tasked". The display is small, but still easy to interpret. The drag-and-drop provides a familiar way to copy or move the recorded files onto my computer.