Digital Voice Recorder for Lectures by Aiworth - Tape Recorder Sound Audio Recorder Dictaphone Recording Device with Playback Variable Speed MP3, Flatten UI

I'm extremely pleased with my purchase of the Aiworth R198 voice recorder, thus with gladness I write this review since it is hard to find a quality items like this these days.Packaging: Simple but brilliant! Simple tan box with a thin cardboard sleeve that keeps the box together. Slip it off and it opens like a book, with a flap on the right side secured with a magnetic flap. Took me time to figure out how to open it and I almost ruined this fabulously cool box. Again simple, maybe even plain, but brilliant! Inside the recorder nestled in a piece of memory foam, a step up from regular foam or only plastic. Under that a partitioned section holding the manual and multiple accessories.Accessories: Many accessories, more than mentioned in the description on Amazon, were found inside such as a line-in cable, earbuds, USB connector, and a lapel microphone. If you were to buy the cheapest of each, it would total more than the cost of the voice recorder! The USB connector for charging and transferring files is more colorful than your normal white/black cable, but is also shorter than normal, maybe too short for some, but then most people probably already have one of these.Storage: This comes with 8 GB internal storage. One can add up to a 128 GB card. I've been told voice recorders and mp3 players perform optimally with 32 GB cards. Higher cards work but seek times are slower leading to hindered performance. I have no cards so I can't test this.Recorder: This is fabulous. All but the screen cover is metal. The screen cover appears to be plastic not glass. This might scratch more easily so I've been careful, but you don't have to worry about broken glass. Overall, excellent fit and finish and fits nicely in your hand. It is amazingly small but has some heft to it showing it is well made. It is definitely not light and chintzy. Metal buttons have a heavy firm feeling. They are very small but I only have an occasional problem with the right/forward button in that I sometimes click the AGC button. If the AGC button was placed below the Del/A-B with a gap where it current is, the button layout would be perfect for me. If someone has huge hands and fingers they may have more problems. Ports are labeled and connect firmly to cables. I have not inserted a card due to not owning any yet. Tiny, heavy duty metal case, firm buttons, and nice screen makes me conclude this is an excellent designed unit build for durability.Durability: This remains to be seen but I'm impressed with the build and the fit and finish. I pray I don't drop it and don't plan on drop testing it. However, the shipping package was really accordion, even the recorder box was crushed a bit on one side. I was worried at first but the player functions wonderfully despite rough handling during shipping.Screen: Small colored screen easily viewed at different angles and more than bright enough for indoors. A bit too bright for me at night but thankfully you can adjust the brightness. It is a colored screen which improves navigating the menus and changing options. The backlighting is evenly distributed without hotspots or being lit on only one edge.Sound: For the size of the tiny speaker it is phenomenal. No constant hiss, buzzing, or whine when listening through the tiny speaker or included earbuds. This is no small feat as I am highly/overly sensitive to speaker hiss. I had to send back two recently bought radios because I could hear hiss and noise distortion throughout the lower first third of the volume range. This after I spent hours researching, calling/emailing companies and professional radio reviewers. All speakers have hiss they say, some just have less than others. I'm thankful I found this recorder and I can listen without being annoyed by any hiss at all, there just isn't any!!! How this tiny thing can have the clarity it does for under $35 dollars when I tried a radio close to $50 I don't know, but it does, and I couldn't be more thrilled.Radio: Can you believe this tiny device includes a built in FM radio? You can manually tune and save 30 presets, or have it scan and insert the strongest stations for you. Here is the amazing thing, it can record the radio stream with just the push of two buttons! This is the only player/radio/recorder I could find that can do this without including bluetooth. I believe all this wireless stuff is deleterious to us and scientific studies are proving this to be true. Reception equals or bests the $50 radio mentioned above which only had 19 presets, no scanning, couldn't record. Did I mention the clarity of the speakers and no static, I couldn't be happier, and almost ecstatic.Recordings: I'm no expert on voice recorders but all the different bit rate recordings sound adequate. My voice is clear but I do hear some background noises since the microphones are so sensitive. I have more learning to do concerning the AGC setting, turning it off gets rid of the background noises, but then you have to hold the recorder close to your mouth, especially for the automatic voice activation, which by the way works perfectly. I primarily bought this because I wanted to record talk radio to skip the commercials and not have to stay awake all night to listen to shows I want to hear. I expected to be disappointed in that the reception would be terrible or I couldn't record etc. But the FM reception is excellent and with two button pushes it works flawlessly. Find your station, hit the menu button, select the first option record, after a couple seconds delay it is recording. Not through the air or from the line out to the line in but internally. You do need to keep the earbuds connected for FM reception. I even figured out to turn the sleep timer on (your choice of 10/30/60/90/120 minutes) follow the above procedure, and it will record, then save, and then turn off the device automatically. I turn the volume down to 0 to make the battery last longer and this doesn't effect the recording. In fact the clarity doing this, for both talk radio, and music is much better than recording your voice in a quite room. Only improvement would be to program the recorders start and stop time with the radio from the unit powered off. For a duration longer than 120 minutes, I just leave it on and turn it off when I wake up (I've done a 4.5 hour recording). I must mention that with 20 minutes of advertising per hour you can gain almost a whole hour of your time back for every three hours recorded. You don't have to listen to the same commercials over and over ad nauseam. You will save even more time if you set the variable speed forward at 8, which is very intelligible (I wish it would go much faster).Menu, Settings, & Options: Menu system is clear, functions appropriately named. More options than can be described here. Radio, time (12/24 hr) & date (3 formats), recordings, music library, sleep timer, alarm, stopwatch, brightness, screensaver (time and date displayed & duration), variable speed playback, audio file editing for .wav format files, etc. etc.Battery: My unit looked fully charged upon opening, it might not have been, and lasted 25-30 hrs. This after spending several hours learning to use it, setting the options, manually scanning the FM band and setting the presets. I'm sure the high use of the backlight for all these tasks shortened the playing time. When the battery runs out it automatically gives an on screen text warning, then saves if recording, and shuts down. Recharge time was less than the 4 hours mentioned in the manual. Upon turning it on all my radio presets, time & date settings were not lost because the battery ran out. You can conserve energy by changing the screensaver duration, decreasing screen brightness, turning the clock screensaver off, and playing at lower volume levels, and turning volume to 0 when recording a radio station.With all this I would give it 10 stars if I could. Not because it's perfect but because it can do so much and surpassed my expectations. The only physical improvements to the unit I could recommend would be a glass screen, and thicker rubber seals over the charging and card slot, along with the physical button arrangement change noted above. I believe that a software program is available for updating the firmware and it would be great if the following recommendations could be instituted by future firmware updates. The most important firmware update, at least for my recorder, concerns the brightness setting. Mine is flaky, I have the screen set to the lowest brightness but sometimes goes to the brightest brightness (not setting, setting stays the same) after being in sleep mode for awhile. Sometimes it goes back to the setting I have it at when waking up from sleep mode again or after the unit has been restarted. Otherwise I have to adjust it again. There are many issues concerning the password lock. In one regard it is very insecure as someone can read the manual or search how to crack your password then listen to your files. An easy fix would be if the resetting of the password is performed it formats the disk. I understand this is for people that lose/forget their password but what good is it for people that use this correctly for security??? In other regards the password lock is too secure in that it prevents the screensaver/sleep mode activating when plugged in to charge (password input screen never goes dark), forbids the programmed record start time from recording, prevents the alarm clock from going off (BTW why is that turning off the alarm shuts your recorder down even if you want it to stay on?), and maybe other things I haven't discovered yet. I wish the clock was a bit more accurate and easier to set. I'd like to be able to use the forward and back buttons to navigate directly my saved preset list on the radio tuning dial, after having selected my presets, not have it manual tune, there is already a manual tuning mode for manual tuning. Already mentioned, I would like faster and slower variable playback speeds, and 180 and 240 minutes added to the sleep timer. And if we had the ability to program the recorder to turn on at designate date and time, tune to desired station, set record start and stop time, save recording and then turn recorder completely off it would be amazing.As it stands the recorder already does so much more than anyone could expect for the exceptional low price of this kit. Although not perfect and a few programming flaws, I give this recorder 5 stars because it does more than what the average user could expect. I highly and without hesitation recommend this to everyone. Your imagination is likely the only thing from stopping you from increasing your productivity and saving time each and every day.

This is the forth Aiworth digital recorder I have purchased, they have all been wonderful. Long battery life, excellent sound recording, sensitive, hears things I can't hear! Solid build, not light weight plastic, great displays. I have purchased 3 as gifts and finally bought myself a fourth one. I bought 2 of the E36 models and now 2 of the R198 models. The R198 that this review is about, comes with built in FM radio and a screen with color icons to allow you to better see what you are picking in the menu. Still the same easy recording start as the E36. (takes about 5 seconds on each to start the recording) Includes VOX recording, which is to say starts recording when it hears something. (VOX means Voice Activated) It is in the settings menu and a little reading will get you through it. AND YES the manual on the R198 is better written than the one with the E36. The information is all there, it just takes some trial and error and follow along on the device to figure it out. Once you have it it is quite simple to use.Anyway, Love my recorders and will buy more as needs arise.

Best audio recorder I've seen so far! It looks great from outside and not too tiny, not too big. Perfect size. Everything works flawlessly. The UI is easy to navigate and colourful and very convenient because of the size of the screen, makes it look like a mini mp3 player. Looks great with the two microphones on top and love the red button which keeps flashing if its recording as an indicator. The sound quality is clear, playback is good. Comes with earphones l, charging cable and another cable to connect to speakers. Picks up normal-volume speaking from 20ft away easily. Features work as intended, and MENU, SAVE, RECORD and several others buttons are convenient to work with. Can charge while recording and a charge lasts several days even with regular use. Auto record is really cool. Additionally there's a stopwatch, timer, alarm, password, RADIO!, music player all in one.

I'm always leery about doing reviews on items right when I receive them . So I waited about 3 months and went through a few charging cycles and used it thoroughly before I wrote this. If you are looking for an easy to use recorder for recording lectures outside environments etc. this is the unit to buy. Its prompt to start on record and super easy to go back and listen to previous recordings with a great battery life. its user friendly on retrieving files and setup menu is very simple. Very well built with some durability and a design that is made so you can put it on a lanyard. This is a big wow for me.

Great Quality and Affordable Voice Recorder....Not Bad at All. Purchased this recorder out of blue from reading the comments werent sure of the brand just took a chance. Received the voice recorder and must say it’s Definitely A Go. Has good high quality for such low affordable price. Not generic feelings or anything on those lines. Surprised at how well it works. The color icons make helps to make organizing your recordings simple and super easy. No trouble learning the device at all in less than 10 minutes. It has a radio and lightweight for carrying..I also like that I can clip this recorder with a lanyard and/ clip for hooking for clothing(see pic) just in case get stopped by the police in public can just easily wear it around my neck or clip it to my clothing. Easy use non complicated at all. Will buy again in future.

I opened a very tightly packed box, so you think all good. I take the recorder out of the foam protector, and out of the plastic bag and one mic cover fell to the floor. It is not treaded to screw bag. Instead of dealing with returns, I placed the cover back over the microphone, and the super glued it into place. I also did the other mic cover, since I saw how they are attached, and knew it would a matter of time before that one pops off. Doesn't look as pretty but at least secure. I used gorilla glue micro gel, and it worked very nice. Haven't used it yet so I can't add to the review