Sony ICDUX80 Digital Voice Recorder with MP3 Stereo Recording and Playback

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 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 . . .

I bought this device primarily for use with Dragon Naturally Speaking Nine Preferred, with which it works quite well.

I was pleasantly surprised, no, make that astounded, at how well it records live music.

The only shortcoming I've found is that battery life isn't nearly as long as advertised, but I would have bought it anyway had I known.

It's hard to believe that something this small could produce such big results.

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.

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.