Perfect for everyone from students to journalists to Moms who just need to remember shopping lists and their children's daily schedules, digital voice recorders are convenient and compact so that you can take them on the go. With built-in microphones that are sensitive enough to seek out only the vocal content you want to record and eliminate background noise at the same time, these recorders are often voice activated so that they only work when someone is speaking.
Some devices are outfitted with additional features such as file editing, variable speed play back, external microphone ports, and they can even record and play multiple file formats from MP3 to WAV among others.
Whether you're looking for a digital recorder to capture a busy sound environment with numerous voice speaking or you just need a device to record the audio from an important lecture, we have a variety of products at both ends of the price spectrum that we've determined to be the best you can buy. Check out our list of the top personal voice recorders in To start, the VNPC offers over hours of record time on 2GB of memory, one of the longest record capabilities available of any device on the list.
You record lecture notes, store personal memos, and take down thoughts at the touch of a button. An important component you'll want in any good recorder is USB connectivity and the VNPC makes file transfer quick and easy from the device to any computer.
Recording your content is also pretty simple and you can adjust the settings to reflect the type of audible environment you're in. A built-in stand keeps the device upright to minimize sound interference from where the recorder has been positioned while keeping the large LCD display in full view for easy reference.
There's even a voice activation feature to keep you from draining the battery too quickly as it automatically engages and disengages the record function when no one is speaking. With an available built-in 4GB of storage capacity and a microSD card slot for expanded storage capacity, the Philips DVT offers a virtually unlimited amount of record time. You're looking at around 44 days of recording on the long play mode setting, shorter at other speeds obviously.
There's a lot to like about this device, including a dual microphone setup to capture superior speech clarity, even in noisy environments. Your recordings are captured in MP3 format and you have a choice of one-touch recording with the push of a single button, or simply go hands free with voice-activated recording.
All you need to do is start speaking and the unit does the rest. The time stamp feature lets you navigate and locate any recording with ease and it only requires just 2 AAA batteries to operate. One shortcoming, this is not a rechargeable unit. The ICD-UX has 4GB of internal memory and comes with a storage expansion slot for up to 1, hours of recording time; there's also a microSD memory card for even more time if you need it.
You get an internal dual-element cardioid microphone for capturing audio content with three sensitivity settings to adjust for the surrounding environment. There's also a speaker at the front of the device or you can use headphones to listen to your recorded content.
You can also configure the unit to automatically set your record levels or do it manually to minimize distortion from loud, incoming sounds. You're trying to jot down important notes while the lecturer continues talking and you inevitably forget something or scratch it down improperly. Fortunately, Livescribe makes a line of smartpens based around the premise that none of us can write very fast. Available in 2, 4, or 8 GB memory sizes, the Sky works like any ball point pen but also records audio at the same time.
While you can just play back the recording and listen to the lecture over again, what's even better is the pen can remember what you wrote down when during that recording. All you need to do is touch the tip of the pen to a certain part of your notes and it automatically plays back the audio portion recorded from that position on the paper.
This recorder is also Wi-Fi enabled and automatically sends your notes and the full recording to an Evernote account if you have one set up. And don't worry if this pen runs out of ink as it comes with replaceable ink cartridges. The DP gives you almost hours of recording time with a storage capacity of up to 2GB; pretty good, though you'll find units with larger storage on our list.
However, this recorder is our top pick because of its ease of use as well as creating great sounding thanks to noise cancelling filters which minimize background noise around you. Finding your audio files is extremely easy with the recorder's Calendar Search Function.
The large LCD front display and basic function buttons are easy to read, so operation is effortless even for those who have a little trouble with their eyes. One great feature with this recorder is you get about hours of battery life on just two AAA batteries. Once your memory is full, you need to delete or erase over previous files.
The VN comes with three recording modes. HQ gives you the highest quality possible, while SP and LP extend your recording times of up to 1, hours of audio at the lowest mode. Dual playback modes let you play your recordings back at 25 percent slower speed or 50 percent faster.
Creating a recording is as simple as speaking thanks to the unit's voice-activated recording function. This recorder comes with a helpful indexing feature allowing you to bookmark specific points of an audio file for easy access.
Large, clearly marked buttons let you stop and record with just one touch while a directional pad gives you total control over your files with play, skip and forward functions. Since this is a flash drive, the unit plugs directly into any PC or Mac to play back your audio files through just about any sound software. No need for any downloading of drivers with this unit, just plug it in and you're ready to go.
The WS is one of Olympus' most versatile models and it's hard to believe they packed so many useful features into this little device. For starters, record functions are fully adjustable with a zoom capability on the microphone that lets you enhance or decrease directivity to focus on a source of audio in an environment with excessive ambient sound.
Of the rest, the Evistr offers the most impressive audio, with the Olympus , Sony PX , Aiworth , and Amago trailing progressively further behind. Most of the recorders we tested also accept external microphones, which can be of higher quality or placed more favorably e.
Only the Zoom option provides two connection types, the more common mini jack and the more secure and higher quality XLR input. You can also plug electric instruments directly into the Zoom, making it the best option for serious musicians. The Evistr does not support an external mic.
Along with your microphone's quality, the file formats available on your recording device also affect the audio quality and how versatile your files will be. Compressing a file saves space but results in less refined audio that is more limiting if you want to edit it.
To capture the highest quality audio, you'll want a recorder that captures audio in WAV, which you can compress into an MP3 after editing. WAV files of Kbps or a Of the recorders geared towards note taking and interviews, the T-mark, or bookmark, function, A-B playback loops, and variable playback speeds do the most to help you sort through your audio files.
Equalizing features are also nice and can help you hear your recordings more clearly. All of the recorders in the test provide most of these basic functions.
However, we couldn't find any bookmarking functions on the Aiworth or Aomago options. The music and production-oriented Zoom H4N and Tascam recorders are another story altogether. Of the two, the H4N gives you more options, partially due to the sheer number of its inputs, three, and its ability to playback four tracks while recording two more. The Tascam's features are dialed back a bit with fewer inputs and playback channels available at a time. The Zoom and Tascam options are behemoths in this category.
Both require you to carry a bag to tote them around for any length of time. Because of their musical and pro podcasting leanings, it is far easier to imagine them hanging out in an office, studio, or with the sound crew at a concert. The rest are all pretty darn compact, with the tiniest being the Evistr , Aiworth , and Amago.
All would fit easily into your pant pocket yes, even the typically undersized woman's pant pocket. The Sony UX is a bit broader, but still exceedingly thin. Its size would never keep you from grabbing it just in case. The Olympus and Sony PX are thicker, usually requiring a jacket pocket or a bag. Two factors have a big impact on battery life in digital voice recorders; battery type and which audio recording quality level you choose.
It has a clever pop-out USB port, so you never have to worry about being caught without your charger. These options are great from a portability perspective, and you don't have to worry about buying batteries, but it doesn't make for the best battery life. You can't expect much more than 20 hours of recording time with these. The Aiworth does claim nearly 50 hours for low quality, 32 Kbps, recordings, but most folks prefer higher quality levels.
The best battery power comes from the two smaller recorders with removable batteries, the Olympus and the Sony PX The Olympus offers incredibly long battery life for its lowest-quality recordings, claiming up to hours of recording time in the 8 Kbps setting. That's if you use alkaline dry cell batteries instead of the rechargeable batteries that come with the device.
With the rechargeable batteries, they claim about 74 hours. The audio recorded at this bit rate is not pleasant to listen to, particularly if you have any background noise to contend with. Still, it will serve if you just want to make sure you don't miss anything in a lecture or meeting. The PX is a better option if you want long battery life at a reasonable audio quality. Sony claims about 55 hours of recordings at a Kbps bit rate.
It's not stellar sound quality, but it works. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two more powerful recorders don't last that long on their batteries alone, with the Zoom performing more poorly than the Tascam.
Expect to have extra batteries on hand for these two options, and plan on purchasing Zoom's AC adapter to keep the H4N plugged in whenever possible. There is internal storage and there is external storage. All of these recorders have the former, the Zoom , Tascam , Olympus , both Sony options, and the Aiworth also accommodate the latter if you purchase SD or microSD cards separately.
Of the studio recorders, the Tascam offers more gigs of memory. Neither the Zoom nor the Tascam has any internal storage to speak of, so you need to pick up a card straight away. So you'll have to download your files more often than you would with the Tascam, which works with microSD cards from 2 to an amazing GB. The Evistr gives you 16GB of integrated storage. The Aomago and Aiworth offer 8 GB each. Almost all of these recorders make it easy to download and share files.
The Evistr , Aiworth , and Aomago all come with USB cords to charge their batteries and communicate with your computer. We couldn't figure out how to get those files to play and don't recommend the device. You just have to slide them out to download your files. It doesn't get easier than that.
Of them, the UX is our favorite since its internal operating system makes it so easy to organize your files in the first place.
The Tascam and Zoom make it a little more complicated, but only because they don't come with the necessary USB connections included. We borrowed one from the other recorders to download files easily from the Tascam. GearLab is founded on the principle of honest, objective, reviews. Our experts test thousands of products each year using thoughtful test plans that bring out key performance differences between competing products.
And, to assure complete independence, we buy all the products we test ourselves. No cherry-picked units sent by manufacturers. No sponsored content. No ads. Just real, honest, side-by-side testing and comparison. Best Digital Voice Recorder of We tested digital voice recorders from brands like Sony, Zoom, Olympus, Tascam, and others to find the best models.
Credit: Clark Tate. Our Editors independently research, test, and rate the best products. We only make money if you purchase a product through our links, and we never accept free products from manufacturers.
Learn more. Hunting for the best digital voice recorder? We researched the top models before buying the 8 most promising options to test head-to-head. Then we started recording: kids explaining their artwork, audio notes in the car, bird song, guitar practice, phone interviews, and staged controlled test scenarios. We compared their audio quality, their battery life, how easy it is to export and share files, and playback editing features.
Here we share where each of these voice recorders shines and if, and how, they falter. The UX offers an excellent combination of audio quality, portability, and simplicity.
Sampling and Bit Rates — A However, they do recommend recording at a higher bit rate to allow for "headroom" in case of unexpectedly loud noises. The bit rate is how much data you are recording every second. Higher bit rates mean higher-quality recordings and require more storage space. Uncompressed WAV files are usually described in these terms, i. For MP3 files, bit rates are often expressed as kilobytes per second Kbps. A higher Kbps means less compression. The latter already have less resolution, so you just can't do as much to edit them.
It produces clear, understandable audio in classroom, quiet office, and noisy coffee shop settings. It also offers a better collection of features than the other models we tested, with an easy-to-navigate menu system, a bright backlit screen, 39 hours of recording time in MP3 format , hour battery life, voice-activated recording to pause and restart after silences, and a pop-out USB 3.
Like many of the other recorders we looked at, it comes with an adequate amount of onboard storage 4 GB but accepts microSD cards, so you can record and store hundreds of hours of recorded audio should you need it. The UX is also the slimmest recorder we tested—at 0. But with 8 GB of internal storage, hours of recording time, and a battery the company claims lasts hours when recording in MP3 format, the WS has the best storage and battery life of the recorders we tested.
The WS also has voice-activated recording to stop and restart recordings after silences, and a pop-out USB 3. It does best in quiet settings with minimal background noise. She also consulted with Wirecutter writer Lauren Dragan , who has a degree in audio production and vocal performance, heads our headphone coverage, and has designed audio-quality and appraisal-testing procedures for our site; Lauren helped Anna design a listening panel to assess the audio quality of the recorders we tested.
Anna personally uses recorders and apps for her work as a writer, and she polled fellow Wirecutter staff members about their favorite apps and recorders for work. For people who need to record audio regularly for school or work, a dedicated device will give you better audio quality and more features than an app. Some even use software-based noise cancellation to digitally reduce noise in your recorded files. Good voice-recording apps have easy-to-use interfaces that let you quickly navigate files and folders, as opposed to the more complicated file storage systems of most hardware voice recorders.
Many apps can sync automatically to Dropbox, Google Drive, or iCloud so you can share or store your files without having to transfer them to a computer via USB.
Smartphone apps can record understandable audio, which may be all you want in a recorder or app. The comparatively poor sound quality of their recordings may grate on you if you need to listen for extended periods of time—say, for transcribing. Smartphone microphones and noise-cancellation systems are optimized for close-up voice capture as well, and while some apps will let you tweak settings for better recording quality, you can generally get better results from a dedicated recorder.
Your choice will come down to features versus convenience, and your particular needs. We also considered reviews from Lifewire and Best Products. To narrow down the contenders, the first thing we looked at was price. The only people who should consider spending more are professionals who need to publish the audio they record, and they likely already know which recorder is best for their specific needs. Even with these restrictions in place, we ended up with dozens of recorders to choose from.
To thin the herd even further, we nixed any models with an Amazon rating of less than four stars. In , we looked at eight models, and for this update we looked at four more. Using the above criteria, we whittled down the size of our test pool to these models:.
For voice recording apps, we consulted 10 editorial roundups covering both iOS and Android apps, noting the apps with the highest review ratings, best-reviewed interfaces, and most-useful features.
We also polled Wirecutter reporters and editors about the apps they use for work. We dismissed transcription and call recorder apps, since this guide is geared toward in-person recording of meetings, lectures, and interviews. We then used the following criteria to choose our finalists:.
For our update, we tested the voice recorders and apps in three settings: sitting at the back of a college lecture hall during class, in a loud coffee shop to simulate an interview, and in a quiet room to mimic dictation. We hit record on all the hardware recorders at the same time in order to directly compare how each captured the same audio; for the apps, we took turns recording with an iPhone 6 and a Samsung HTC Newer phones may have better microphones, but our experts said that on most smartphones, the app will have more of an effect on recording quality than the microphone.
We recorded with noise cut high- and low-pass filters enabled on the recorders that had it all of our test models except for the Philips and scene-setting features appropriate for a given test situation turned on, based on the recommendations of our experts.
Most of the recorders have options to select recording modes for scenes like lectures, meetings, interviews, or dictations. Wirecutter writer Anna Perling recorded MP3 audio at the highest bit rates available on each device in order to get the best possible audio quality—this showed what each recorder was capable of.
That meant Kbps for all recorders except for the Olympus, which maxes out at Kbps though even this should be good enough for voice recordings. For the coffee shop scene, she headed to a crowded Starbucks and sat near the bar with her mom.
For the office scene, Anna read a different Seinfeld monologue in a quiet room in her house to mimic dictation, placing recorders on a table 2 feet away from her mouth.
Once she had the recordings, she noted how each recorder and app let her store the files, and how easy or difficult it was to transfer those files to her computer, label and organize them, and then upload them to Dropbox.
Anna then conducted a blind listening panel: Four Wirecutter staffers listened to second samples of each unlabeled recording and rated the overall audio quality and intelligibility of words for each.
The Sony UX received the highest overall scores from our listening panel, and it has the best combination of features of any recorder we tested. The recorder is also the easiest to navigate, with an intuitive toggle menu to access settings and recordings. The Sony UX ranked roughly the same as two other models in two of the three recording settings. You can kind of hear some room interference, but that's such a minor problem for a voice recorder that it's barely worth mentioning.
Otherwise this was a pleasant if somewhat filtered recording. The UX was the easiest recorder to navigate and use among those tested. Buttons are clearly labeled, unlike on the Philips DVT, and a back button makes menu navigation much simpler than on the Olympus WS The Philips recorder lacks this function altogether; on the Olympus, Anna was able to rename files and folders from her Mac, but the device no longer saw them the Olympus manual does warn against this possibility.
Anna recorded for about two hours, and the battery indicator showed that the recorder was still fully charged. A covered but easily accessible microSD slot allows for 32 GB more of storage space if you need more recording hours.
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