Excellent voice recorder, but not very sturdy

This is a great product, overall. I've owned Olympus and Sony voice recorders, and am extremely satisfied with this latest offering from Olympus.

The voice recorder functions as expected. The controls are tiny (partly because of the very small size of the unit), but I've found them fairly easily accessible, and quite intuitive. I haven't opened the owners manual (yet), and have put it to very good use.

The amount of memory is outstanding: 1GB, with hundreds of hours of recording time at the lowest setting and 10 hours of stereo high quality recording time.

Downloading your voice recordings and uploading MP3's couldn't be easier with the new built-in USB design. The battery compartment pulls away with the press of a small button on the back, and reveals a USB connector, not unlike a USB datakey. No drivers are necessary (for windows 2000 or XP), and it shows up as a "removable drive", making it a snap to drag and drop to and from the Olympus.

The construction is a little flimsy, shows scratches easily, and the battery compartment cover comes off easily, especially in a shirt or pants pocket. I can see this being an issue down the road (I've owned it for a month now). It feels flimsy and lightweight, so one would expect a form-fitting case to be included, but there is none. I've had a hard time finding an aftermarket case to protect it, as it is much smaller than most cell phones or cameras.

Audio quality is quite adequate for voice recording, but for recording music (I use the HQ Stereo mode to record my guitar as I write songs) there is some audible hiss. Not a problem for my uses, but this may be an issue to some people. The stereo mics are located such that they have openings on the top, front, and back, so the pickup is omnidirectional. There is a mic input, which I have not yet tried, that may offer higher quality, but as I said, the built-in mics are quite adequate for my purposes.

Battery life has proven to be quite good. I have recorded long music and voice sets, repeatedly, without having to replace the batteries. I've gone 10 days on a single set, doing recordings and playback for an hour or so a day, on average, but don't have a definite battery life.

There is a lock button to prevent "pocket recordings" and unintended changes in settings. It is easy to switch between voice (for recording and playback) and music (mp3 playback) with a slider switch.

The built-in speaker is adequate for playing back low quality voice recordings (not mp3's) and can be played back at faster than normal speed.

Recordings can be divided into five folders.

The MP3 player is loud, clear, and sounds great. The WOW settings do enhance most music (though I've come across a few songs that sounded better without it). The MP3 Player is easy to use. My only gripe is that the horizontally scrolling display of the artist/song title, is painfully slow, such that you have to look at the display for a good 10 seconds to see the song title (more if it's a long one).

In short, I'm quite impressed, but will need to be careful in how I handle this, especially since I can't find a case to fit it.