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Olympus WS100 Digital Voice Recorder Review
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The WS100 is powered by one AAA battery. It can record 27 hours audio on the HIGH QUALITY setting. Even more if you lower the setting a bit.
The controls are intuitive and easy to use as well. Looking directly at the Olympus Digital Voice Recorder, the right side of the device has a RECORD, PLAY, and STOP button. Self explanatory right?
On the front of the device is the controls that allow you to scroll through folders and files already on the device. You can also tweak settings on the device. For instance, I always turn off the backlit screen because it uses up too much battery. Not excessive, mind you. But for my uses I let it record for hours at a time and don’t want to wast battery power on lighting the screen. In addition to the general controls there is an erase button to easily erase files. Thankfully it prompts with a confirm box – which has saved me on multiple occasions from accidentally deleting a file.
Microphone sensitivity is controlled in two places on the WS100 Olympus Digital Voice Recorder. The simplest controls are on the left edge of the device, which allows you to choose between HQ (high quality – to reduce background noise), SP and LP (long play) settings. You can also set mic sensitivity in relation to these two settings by scrolling through the menu settings on the voice recorder screen itself.
The voice activate function is nice too. When activated it records automatically as soon as it detects sound.
It contains 256MB of flash memory and can be connected to a computer via USB. It records in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format. I prefer MP3, but I just plug into my laptop, move them over to iTunes, and select “CONVERT TO MP3″ and voila! it’s done. If you are more technically savvy, I guess you could move them into something like Audacity for editing or converting to MP3 as well.
It can be used with both PCs and MACs, so no worries about cross platform ability.
Since it is a “mass storage class” device, it can also be used for general file storage. I like this feature alot.
One of my favorite parts is the file management and organization. It is very straightforward using the controls described above. Basically, there are five folders and each folder can hold 199 files. These can be organized by topic or general interest or whatever.
For under $100 (sometimes $50-$75), the WS100 Olympus Digital Voice Recorder is one of the most affordable and easy-to-use recorders available.
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