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

I use my DVR for almost everything; journal, shopping lists, work to-do lists, and personal to-do lists. I decided that I wanted to also have something that I could playback some audio files for customers and potential customers, so I looked into a DVR that could also play MP3 files. I first got the Olympus DS-40 and I was very happy with that one. It had great playback sound, great for dictation, robust, and very easy to use buttons. But as I decided to load some music on it, I found that the memory was way too limited for me (512MB). So, I looked into the same capabilities but with more memory. I swapped it for this one and I have been very happy. The pro's:
Massive memory
Can swap between voice and music; making it truly like 2 devices in one
Lightweight
Embedded USB port
Lighted screen
Noise cancelling for playback (have to use: see con's)
Did I say massive memory?
There is a rechargeable battery, but I can't say if that works as well.

Con's:
Buttons are so small that you can mispress easily
VCGA doesn't work very well and end up cutting off bits of your recording
PLAYBACK- the speaker for the playback must've been where they cut the costs. Its soft and not crisp at all. However, don't let that fool you into thinking that its not recording good. When you play it back with the WOW, it sounds like you're right there in the room-crystal clear even in HQ mode.
Doesn't have a hard switch to go between dictation, conference, and lecture microphone sensitivities on the fly like the DS-40 does (GREAT feature)

All around, this is a great recorder and will do awesome serving multiple functions for you. With its memory size and embedded USB you can use it effectively as your memory stick, too. I'm very happy with this purchase and would definitely trade off the lousy speaker for the memory...

I love everything about this recorder except that it created corrupt wma files. By corrupt I mean that after I downloaded the file to my pc, when I listened to the file it played fine for a while then the playback would hang in the middle of the recording. I figured out, and a few hours later was instructed by Olympus support, to format the recorder. So far that's fixed the problem. Also, it's in the manual but be sure you realize that if the battery runs out during a recording the file doesn't get closed and you lose that recording. So don't forget to press stop when you're finished recording. One nice surprise is that the battery supplied is a 900mah NIMH AAA which is as far as I know is currently about the highest capacity AAA nimh available.

edit: There is an file copy of the user manual in the recorder's memory that's accessible when it's connected to a pc and is considerably easier to read than the paper copy. If you care anything about it copy it to another location since if you format the recorder the file goes bye bye. It's available on the olympus web site though.

edit: there is now a firmware upgrade that allows mp3 recording

question: I finally got around to using the mp3 music player function. Rewind works but I simply cannot get it to fast-forward. If anyone knows the secret I'd appreciate a comment. thanks

I own another Olympus recorder which I bought years ago and I paid a ton of money for it. It was money well spent. I was intimidated by the "digital" part of it for a long, long time, but once you get the hang of it, these are so fabulous.

There's a button on the front that lets you move between folders A-E. That letter will appear on the screen and you can work on 5 different projects easily---just press the little button and it will take you to the folder you want where you can store all your notes for that project.

Within each folder are 199 files---I know this sounds confusing if you are new to the digital world, but the recorder does it all for you. You just go to the folder (tap the bottom button and it will go from A to E on the screen and you stop at the letter you want). Then Talk! Easy! When you are done, you'll see on the screeen 1/1---which means two things: you have just created a file and there are a total of 1 files in your folder, 1/1. The next time you record, it will say 2/2---which means you are in the second file and there are 2 files in your folder and on and on it goes until you get 199 files.

Now let's say you want to go back and listen to file 1 of your 199 files. You click back through them manually with the (<---) arrow which is on the front wheel until you get to it. The screen will say 1/199 and you will be at the first file and know you have 199 files total. I think that is just so easy and so cool!

To record, you press the top button on the right which you can see above (it's just below the screen) and talk---that's it. You don't press two buttons at the same time like in the olden days.

If you want to pause, click it again. If you want to stop recording, the top button on the left is stop and you click it. NOTHING could be easier.

At first, I was afraid to buy a recorder with the buttons on the front because my old one had them on the side, so I went to a store and looked at the product. THE FRONT IS BETTER. You have to remember that this little guy is the size of a heath bar. It's small! And holding it in your hand makes it super easy to click all the buttons with your thumb. Another reviewer said they were too small---I think they are PERFECT...go and look at Office Depot and you'll see the size. If you can't read them, the red one is record and the black one is stop. I can see them just fine, and if you can't remember this few buttons, then you probably are not reading this review.

Now, this gadget has all sorts of hidden menus to do all sorts of detailed things---I flip through the menu now and then and check them out, but basically, I just want to record and download I'm a happy camper.

It comes with a foam pouch which is really nice. My old one didn't have that.

It's supposed to come with a rechargeable battery and it's supposed to recharge anytime you have it hooked up to your computer. Mine came with no battery---leading me to believe it was slightly used and repackaged. I don't care, I love this gadget and I want to be buried with it and with my otter box with nano inside. (I love my otter box and I'm getting another one just for the olympus, as I dropped the first olympus in the pool---yes I dictate while I swim!)

The second reason I bought another olympus (BTW, the first one dried out and I did get my files donwloaded!) is because my first one had 1/4 of a gig and this one has 4 Gigs! I filled the old one up in a week, so I'm thinking this one should last two months!!! Unbelievable for the price I paid which was $109---my old one cost over $300, I think.

Olympus makes a ton of these little recorders and I went to their website to try to figure out what was what. They could do a lot better job of telling you.

I narrowed the choices by the USB port. The old one I have snaps apart (too cool) and one side is a usb insert (like a flash drive). This one has a little USB thing that slides out of the bottom and then retracts. This was a deal breaker for me with the other models---I will lose a cord and I wanted the USB thing to be built in. The whole point of having a digital recorder is to hook it to your computer.

I like the voice activated feature(unlike another reviewer).

The other reviewer is right that you do have to go through several buttons to erase, but if you think about it, better to be asked to confirm, then to erase by mistake. I *think* (but I'm not sure if I remember this correctly) there might be an erase for the whole folder on one of the menus.

At this price and this size, there's no reason not to have one with you all the time. It will work with Dragon and actually type up your files, but I am here to tell you that the Dragon people are as unfriendly as they come. After I spent DAYS trying to figure out why my Dragon software would not work when I was trying to train Dragon with their mic, I paid the $20 to talk to someone who did not speak English as a first second third of fourth language. He-she-it said it was an issue they knew about and that I could not use the headphone that came with the software. They refunded my $20 and I bought a new mic---but what about all MY TIME! DAYS! I think they owe me for that. And Dragon did ruin one of my audio drivers on my computer causing it to crash over and over---GRRR and they owe me to get that fixed by the Geeks, like I will ever see that money. If anyone knows of any voice recognition software that actually works and is made by a company that's nice, responsible, and friendly, please comment to this post. I paid Dragon to figure out how to convert the wma files this recorder produces to wav files and I know it can be done because I've done it, but he said it couldn't AND took my money. Yes, I love them. If anyone knows how to do it, please also comment. Using voice recognition with this recorder is a very important reason for getting it.

I purchased this for voice recording and also for the MP3 music player. Its amazing how well it picks up all the sounds around it, very impressive. The music player also sounds great, and with 4 gigs you can put lots of songs on it. Overall I'm very happy with this unit and would highly recommend it.

Simple to use, long battery life, recharges from USB adapter.

Simply the best audio recorder I've used and the MP3 player is nice to have.