Sony Digital Flash Voice Recorder (ICD-PX312)

• Built-in 2 GB flash memory
• Records in MP3 (320 kbps-8 kbps)
• Approximately 72 Hours of battery life (recording)
• Memory Card Expansion Slot (microSD/M2)
• USB: USB 2.0 (Mini-B),System Requirements: Windows, Mac

PROS-

-outstanding voice quality

Small and light

-unobtrusive

easy to download recordings to your computer

Long record time with 2 GB of memory 22 hours at highest quality. Does anyone need more?

Memory cards give virtually unlimited record time. I popped in a thumbnail sized 8 GB Sandisk micro sd (about $10) for a total of 10 GB of memory. That gives a total of more then 110 hours of record time at the highest quality level (at lower fidelity levels, record time is higher, as much as 2700 hours with 10gb of memory). Not enough? You can put in a 32GB card, which will give nearly 400 hours of top quality record time. At lower fidelity settings, 32 gigs will give up to around 9000 hours. Amazing, 32 gig in a thumbnail sized memory card.

recordings are easily transferred to your hard drive

Simple to operate

The basic buttons are Record/pause, Play, Stop, Fast forward, and Rewind.

-Mike is quite sensitive, but well controlledable to record well in a conference with many people at different distances.

Lanyard hole in case Helpful Get one or put a string through the hole.

works with Dragon voice to text software

CONS

Case is made of smooth slippery plastic. Nowadays you can buy a $1 pen with a grippy rubbery outside. A grippy rubber surface on the sides and back would make this easier to hold!

a lanyard should be included

Instruction manual is ridiculously long this is not a complicated device to operate. The manual is too verbose.

Cannot modify existing "scene" modes or create my own. A "scene" mode is a collection of record settings geared toward a particular task. For example, lectures, meetings, dictation

software that comes with it is lousy, and for most people unneeded. You can use your regular file management tools on your computer to name different folders for recordings (very handy), move them around, delete, play, etc.

The date format is bizarre.

The screen shows, "11y 6m 7d" to show the date we know as 6/7/2011. An annoyance, file dates are, however, properly displayed in your computer

mike sensitivity setting is buried in too many menus, and there is no scene setting with the mike at maximum sensitivity.

SUMMARY

Recommended. I like it. It works well and can be very very useful. Sony should fix the little things I mentioned. I considered giving it four instead of five stars because of these little niggles. But it is so outstanding in other ways that I gave it five anyway.

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I just retired my Sony ICD-B600 Digital Voice Recorders (I had several) and replaced them all with this Sony ICD-PX312 unit. When I saw the Amaz. delivery promise for this PX312 had shifted to "1 to 3 months," well I figured the PX312 for out-of-production ... and so this was as low as prices were going to get. So I snagged several off the pegs at WorstBuy.

The primary reason I upgraded is that the PX312 makes it very easy to save audio files on my hard drive. It has a female A-Mini-USB plug on the side and so I can use my Zip-Linq Retractable USB to A-Mini-USB Cable to connect it to the computer. The PX312 then appears on my computer as a plug-n-play flash drive, no software drivers required. Then I can just copy any audio files off of it and on to my computer. The PX312 stores its audio files in MP3 format, so there are no file conversions involved. In fact, there's no software or drivers needed at all for this gizmo. Sweet!

The Sony website offers a download titled "Sony Sound Organizer for IC Recorder v 1.1" to help you do things like create/move/delete folders on the device. I wouldn't bother. My experience with Sony software and drivers is that it's usually buggy-as-cr@p, so why complicate my computer's environment for such trivial stuff. Any recordings made are found in the Voice/Folder1 folder, and that's all I need to know or do to snag them or erase them.

[The B600 had no computer software, no USB, etc. to support sound transfer. The only option for transferring its recordings was to use the speaker/audio out jack. I ended up using Windows Sound Recorder and the microphone in jack on the back of the PC, and even then there was some odd tweaking required to make that solution work. At the time, I would have had to cough up another forty smackers or so to get the model that provided file transfer support ... and it required software drivers to do it.]

The PX312 also has gobs of memory and will even accept an M2 MicroSD card for expansion. When some reasonably sized M2 cards get cheap as dirt, well I'll snag 'em ... but I probably won't even need them.

The weird "hold" button thing that was going on with the B600 is solved. On this PX312 there is a ON/OFF/HOLD slider switch. Pull down to turn on, pull down again to turn off. (You do have to hold it there for a few seconds sometimes.) Pull the slider switch UP for the hold function. That function locks all the buttons while the device is powered up (so you won't accidentally punch one). On the B600 the "HOLD" slider was actually nothing more than an ON/OFF slider. But anyone could have gone crazy trying to find the ON/OFF slider. Since it was cryptically labeled "HOLD."

Also gone with the PX312 is the weird "erase" function that was on the B600. With the B600, if you followed the instructions for erasing a recording, it resulted in the entire recording being played 10 times before it was erased. Why anyone would have a need for THAT to occur is beyond me. But simply pressing the "Erase" button twice in succession while playing the recording would erase the recording instantly. That approach was undocumented in the instructions. With the PX312 it's much smoother. Push the 'erase' button and the recording to be erased starts to play. The screen asks you to confirm the erase. Select "Yes" and it's gone.

Also solved: The PX312, unlike the B600, has an auto-power-off option and the timer can be adjusted by the user.

The PX312 does bring forward some unresolved shortcomings from the B600. The PX312, as was the B600, is way "over-engineered." The basic operation/buttons and the display screens are not as simple as they could be. It took a bit of reading/plowing through the manual (and reading reviews here on Amazon) to get oriented. And there is other functional overkill. I don't need five storage folders (or a way to transfer files between them), an alarm clock (and a way to select a message for the alarm), the ability to go back and splice previous messages, the ability to append recordings to existing recordings and other such what not. All those functions and buttons just complicate the device/screens/menus needlessly, imho. I just wanted a gizmo that would make audio recordings at the push of a button, that would let me move them to my computer for storage and that made them in a format that didn't require any conversion efforts. And I suspect that is just about all most users want out of these devices. I guess Sony thinks it has to load up a bunch of this useless functionality to justify the asking price.

The price of the Sony devices with this level of capability had been steadily dropping, of course, and so these PX312s cost me no more than what I paid for the ICD-B600s a few years ago. Now the ICD-B600s will be sold on eBay ... and so I've upgraded for practically nothing. Double Sweet!!

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We have used this little jewel to tape lectures from the back of an auditorium, meetings, as well as online webinars the SCENE settings allow you to change from interview to notes to lecture to meetings, just with a push of the button. Using an mini-SD chip gives you all-day recording space. Easy on the AAA batteries, too! Way to go, Sony!

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I bought this recorder in December 2011, but only used it a few times. I had recorded less than five hours. In March 2012, in the middle of a recording, I noticed that the screen had gone blank. Thinking maybe the batteries had died I replaced them, but no good. It's pretty much a brick. It doesn't work even when plugged in to my computer or to mains electricity via the mini USB port.

The Sony warranty does cover replacement for up to a year, but there are two hitches.

1) it costs $29 + tax to participate.

2) the replacement is likely to be a refurbished model.

There's also the matter of my data. I recorded it on the internal memory, and now it's inaccessible. All but one of my recordings had been transferred to my computer, so that's good at least. The remaining one, which I was recording when the device kicked the bucket, is still there and I have absolutely no way of retrieving it. Sony customer service referred me to a data recovery service; they told me that since it's on the internal memory I am SOL. I'm sure there probably is a way of doing it, but that it would cost far more than what this thing is worth.

Anyway, the thing quit on me and I've lost my data in the process.

If you choose to go with this one anyway (I bought it because it had the best reviews for the price point), get yourself a micro SD card and record exclusively on that. Then when it dies at least you'll still be able to get at your data.

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I have never used a digital recorder as such. I've had PDA's and Phones that will do that job but do not do a very good job of it. So I have no frame of reference. I am very pleased. As is typical of me I keep wanting to do things with out reading the instructions. So there is a little of ADD getting in the way. The sound quality even on the low mike setting is remarkable to me. It's very small. I expected it to be much bigger. I love that you have the option to use an external microphone and head set. I've ordered some for it, one omnidirectional and one unidirectional. I'm not sure of my choices. I'm an old ham operator so I only knew about Sure microphones and they were very expensive. I also love that it is digital. One problem I had with the old tape version is that after a while the motors started making noise that was picked up by the recorder.

The only flaws I have found is that there is no option for external power and no LED back-light. In strong light or very dark areas it is hard to read. My normal solution would be to make a shade but you have to have a back-light to do that. I may look into attaching one of those cheap key-chain lights and make a flip up shield. I researched the reviews on this same product but with different sellers and it fared well. For the money this looks like my solution for now. I'll update it later if my opinion changes. I do recommend directional and omni external mics. Another thing I may look into is making some sort of shock/wind cover so that if you have it outside or in your pocked you do not ended up recording that stuff.

Hope this helped.