Good Desgin, But Battery Life & Storage Size Are Issues
Pros:
Built-in USB design, good voice recording quality, simple to use
Cons:
Poor battery life, LCD screen scratches easily
The Bottom Line:
Good entry level DVR - simple to use, good voice recording, and built-in USB. Poor battery life and easily scratched screen is a concern.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I've been using the Olympus WS-311 for about two months now and have been reasonably pleased with it, however there are a couple of drawbacks, namely the storage and how quickly it drains the battery.
Design
The unit is very small and can easily fit in a pocket. The LCD screen can be read very clearly and the buttons are simple and easy to learn how to use. The mic is located on the top of the unit so holding it while speaking into the mic is very easy. The speaker for playback is located on the bottom of the unit, and although small it puts out enough sound that you can hear it from a short distance away. The main strength of the design is the fact that you can connect this directly to your PC using the built in USB port. This feature makes using this very convenient and was the major reason I purchased this DVR. Syncing this with Windows Vista is painless and transferring the WAV files to my PC is fast and easy. Finally, the plastic screen is scratched very easily and I now my unit looks awful after being in my backpack for two months.
Operation
Learning how to use this device is fairly easy once you figure out how the files are organized. Essentially Olympus provides 8 files for you to somewhat organize your recordings. I just put all of them into file "A," but you can choose an option most convenient for yourself. Also, starting and ending a recording is very easy and deleting files is a breeze. Very simple to use. Also, there is a hold button on the right side that acts as an on/off button.
Sound
I have been very pleased with the sound recording so far. Although it seems to pic up a lot of background noise, possibly because the mic is sensitive, playback is clear. In addition, the recordings that I have made and transferred to my PC have been good quality. In fact, I just used this to record a concert and the sound is pretty clear.
Storage
The 512 MB of storage translate into roughly 15-16 hours of recordings. For me that is too little and I constantly have to transfer files to my PC in order to free space on my DVR. However, this issue may not apply to all owners, so you'll have to be the judge. For me, I should have spent the extra $30 to get double the storage capacity.
Battery
The WS-311 runs off of a single AAA battery. I've learned that this is a weakness of the DVR because the battery seems to last just 10 hours or less. This is very annoying because you must always have a spare or backup ready if you are recording long sessions. In fact, sometimes the battery just dies without warning (there is an indicator on the LCD screen with three different levels of battery power), but if you've had the unit on for over an hour sometimes it simply dies and you may not even know it. The only indicator would be that the red light on the front near the LCD screen - It would turn off when the battery dies. I believe that you can turn the sound on and a beep might alert you, but after the first day I turned the sound option off because it would beep every time I pushed a button, which is extremely annoying, espeically if you do not want to interrupt someone or draw attention to yourself when the room is quiet. If you are going to buy this DVR, I highly recommend buying rechargeable batteries because this thing will eat through your battery budget fast!
