Compare Prices
Olympus WS-331M Digital Voice Recorder Review
Filed Under Reviews | Leave a Comment
The WS-331M has a clear LED screen. Some have complained that it is rather small, but I so far have not ad any problems with mine. Since the recorder itself is small I don’t see how they could have made it any bigger in the first place. Regardless, generally reviewers haven’t complained about the screen real estate.
Even with a battery loaded up, the digital voice recorder barely weighs a few ounces and I can carry it in my shirt pocket or front pants pocket. To get an idea of the size it is barely half the size of a standard Blackberry phone and can be tucked away almost anywhere.
Because of it’s size, it’s also super easy to use: About four inches long by perhaps two wide and not even a half-inch thick. Record, Stop and Play controls are conveniently located on the right side and easily manipulated with the thumb. A four-way controller on the front handles volume and forward and reverse direction. A center button takes care of the menu. There are separate buttons for Erase and Folder/Index. On the left side is the Hold button and a mode selector for Music or Voice.
As mentioned earlier, the Olympus WS331M has 2GB of storage. That’s a ton of storage – 555 hours of recording time. Some of the uses I have found for this is to take copious mental notes when on vacation, not having to worry that I will lose them. I just take it home with me and listen through the recordings as I find time.
You can transfer your files via USB as shown in the breakaway photo of the WS331M below:
Just plug it into your Mac or PC and it will be instantly recognized as a mass storage device. In other words, your computer will simply treat it as another hard drive from which you can drag and drop files. (So simple even a caveman could do it.) This has significant advantages over other digital voice recorders from other manufacturers which are made in a proprietary format and requires you to install special software.
Ugh … c’mon SONY, wake up.
The format audio files are recorded in are WMA format, which stands for “Windows Media Audio”. But, as the other Olympus Digital Voice Recorders also do, you can use this on a Mac too, provided you have a copy of Windows Media Player for Macintosh.
On this site, we have a page dedicated to the WS-series digital voice recorders, where you can find new and used WS-series devices: Olympus WS-331M Store Page
Compare Prices
Comments
Leave a Reply
