Customer Reviews

SANYO ICR-FP550E Digital MP3 Voice Recorder with eneloop batteries and USB battery charger

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am training to be a neuropsychologist, and am often asked by supervisors to record my sessions with clients. This is my main use for a digital voice recorder.

I had an Olympus digital voice recorder that gave me nothing but frustration. The sound quality was okay, but not great. It did not communicate with my PC as it should have, and after one particularly frustrating episode with the Olympus and PC, I decided to purchase a new voice recorder. The Sanyo has far exceeded my expectations. It talks to my PC like an old friend - very easy and intuitive, exactly what I wanted in my new recorder.

What I did not expect was the great sound quality that I have with this recorder. Even with background noise, the session material is very, very clear. The ease of use and sound quality have far exceeded my expectations. I am very happy with this product.

Because the Sanyo uses MP3 files, I simply plug this in the USB port of my Vaio or my Mac and transfer the files from DVR to wherever I want them (my music).
The buttons are intuitive and easy to use. I did hit the erase button once, but you have to hit it and hold it again for the files to erase.
On lowest quality the sound was good enough, but I'm currently recording class room lectures and yoga classes on medium quality.
Good luck on your search.

This is one of the better voice recorders out there. Quality is great and the money you will save not having to buy batteries every week more than pays for this item in the first semester of college or whatever you will be using it for.

This is my first digital recorder, so I have no basis of comparison, and will just give info about what I like. I bought this Sanyo after reading the reviews here on Amazon. They were really good and I can see why.

I do psychic readings and use it to record sessions. I put it in the middle between myself and my client. I am about 2 yards away from it.

On the conference setting, I am simply amazed at how well it picks up. It is sooo good, it gets even the tiniest nuances and inflections in the voice, not to mention duplicating the voice quality accurately. (This is on the highest quality recording. I've not tried the other settings.) I am really impressed.

Also it has 80 hours of recording time, on highest quality setting. That's a lot of hours!

It comes with 2 batteries and a charger that you plug into the USB port. Ah, this is SO great! The batteries last forever!

When I first got it and I was figuring out how to work it . . . setting the time and day . . . and preferences--conference or dictation, etc., I ran through it once and had no problem doing everything all over again. It is really logically and smartly set up. It makes sense. You won't sit there trying to remember how you did it last time. You will remember because everything is smartly designed.

When you're done recording and want to upload to your computer, you hook it up through the USB port. It opens as a drive!!! I love this. You open the folder in which you have your recording (it has folders into which you put your recordings), and move it to the computer.

So, no software to upload, no new interface to learn . . . It's in an MP3 format, which is great for me for emailing the sessions to my clients. If I want to change it to a WAV format, I use SWITCH -- it's free.

When I go to the office to see my clients, I find that using the Sanyo is really easy in terms of pressing record, turning it off, choosing another folder. Very easy and hassle free. This was important to me because I didn't want to spend a lot of time fiddling with it and attracting attention to this process.

What I do when the batteries are low is discharge them completely by just running the recorder, before I charge them again, to make sure the batteries retain their capacity for full charge.
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ADDED SEPTEMBER 21, 2010:
After using this product for a while I am amazed at just how long the battery lasts. As I've said, I do discharge it when it's near the end so it retains full charge, and it just keeps going and going and going. Ease of use is awesome. Love everything about this little gadget.

ADDED OCTOBER 26, 2010:
Forgot to say, the conference setting is incredible. I don't know how they are able to make it so that with the distances of people, it still comes out clear.

This recorder surprised me. With 3 different recording quality settings (70 hours on HQ, 140 on LP and 280 on SP) I find the HQ setting to be the best, but the others aren't really far behind. It has 2 recording modes, one for dictation (short distance from mic) and the other for conferences (far distance from mic). I find both work well for close up and far away with the far away (conf) setting picking up a little more 'noise' while recording what is needed.

I tested this unit in my garage and bedroom placing it at the furthest point from me possible (about 20') and the audio was clear on both dict and conf settings with the best results on conf setting.

Bottom line is this unit can easily record any conversation in a room clearly with nothing added. I even placed the unit in my purse and then tested it with a conversation 7' away and it picked up everything clearly.

Whether you want to use it as a personal dictation device, recording a meeting or lecture or whatever, this unit delivers with no external mics needed.

It beeps when recording is activated, but this is easily turned off and even has a mode where you press record and then it waits for sound and starts recording. When no sound it pauses and resumes when more sound is detected. It saves it all to 1 file. This feature has 3 sensitivities. Tested on high even background (15' away) TV noise will activate it. It takes around 1/2 second to start recording so next to nothing is missed. Average battery life is 15 or so hours of continual recording.

The model I am reviewing comes with an 2 AAA batteries and charger. It takes 2 hours to charge from fully dead via USB port (no regular plug in charger included). This unit records to standard MP3 so no extra, proprietary software required. Simple, free software such as Audacity can be used for basic editing and pretty much any audio program will do playback. The charge on the rechargeables is roughly 15-20 hours of continuous recording.

This unit is pretty much the bomb as of this date (5-16-10)

I purchased this product to use for my language study. I wanted a recorder that recorded in MP3 format so I chose this one. Immediately when I got it, I noticed that the sound quality was much poorer than my previous recorder. The speakers do not get very loud and unless the person being recorded is close to the microphone, it does not pick up well. After 2 months of daily use I started having problems with playback. I would record something and then when I press play, there was nothing but fuzz. I had to purchase a new recorder. I would not recommend this one to anyone.

Nice recorder. Purchased for my daughter who is a first year college student. She plans to use it to record lectures. So far she says its working fine (only has had for a few days). Easy to use and voice quality is good, even in a big noisy lecture room. She has not tried the download feature yet so not sure about that but I don't foresee any problems there. The reason for 4 instead of 5 stars was due to delayed shipping. I paid 19.99 for expedited shipping (1-3 days)and it took 7 days to arrive. I contacted the seller,who responded quickly,and refunded 10.00. All in all a good experience and I would probably purchase from [...] again.

Pros: Decently easy to use, rechargeable batteries, lots of memory

Cons: Volume is kind of low when playing

I haven't done a data transfer yet, but I am assuming that should not be too hard. This recorder works well when I am doing neuropsychological testing. I just wished it was a little louder during playback.

I use this recorder daily as a student attending small lectures of approx. 100 people. The lecturer almost always has a mic and there are speakers throughout the ceiling, but there are times the mic doesn't work.

So far my experience has been great. I love being able to recharge the batteries, so as long as I have the charger I don't have to worry about batteries. In the conditions that I use it I set it to conference mode. This works great for lecture halls and picks up the ambient sound a lot as well, but the lecturer is very very clear. My friend records using the standard stock software on the iphone, and this little recorder does a much better job. The sound on the sanyo gives very crisp and clear audio playback, while the iphone is much more muffled and requires a much higher volume on playback while still having a much poorer overall sound quality.

I am very pleased with this purchase, it is very easy use the USB cord to transfer your files to a computer as well. I would purchase another if something happened to this one and I'd definitely recommend this to a friend.

I gave this to my father for Father's Day. I want him to record his stories so we can keep them and play them for my daughter when he is not able to visit her. He said it looks easy to use but we have not tried it much yet. I like the concept though.