Olympus WS-500 Digital Voice Recorder (Silver)

by Olympus

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 1.5 x 5 x 6 inches ; 6.4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00264TQRG
• Item model number: WS-500MSilver
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,773 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

Stay organized on the move with this high-class storage device and powerful music player. Transfer meetings or notes and even large documents to your PC with the easy-to-use USB input. The WS-500M is designed to be plugged directly into your computer for fast file transfer. With 2GB of internal memory, store up to 500 songs and listen to them in impressive stereo sound with track and artist name clearly displayed on the LCD.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

160 of 160 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Simplicity and some ease of use, July 10, 2009

By 

J. Preston (San Juan Mountains) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Olympus WS-500 Digital Voice Recorder (Silver) (Office Product)

I bought this as a backup to my other Olympus recorder (which I frequently lend out). My other recorder is an Olympus WS-100 which I bought 4 years ago. It was one of the first digital voice recorders ever made. It has served me well.

This unit contains a number of improvements over the WS-100 and the WS-400.

When I bought this, I was afraid I would have to carry around a USB cable with me. However, this unit has a little slide button on the side which extends a built-in USB connector. Plugging this into a USB port is a snap.

This unit is a little more compact than the WS-100. It also seems to solve the record delay which was a time vampire on the WS-400. This unit starts to record immediately on pressing the record button.

I would give this unit five stars except except the menu is almost indecipherable without spending an entire day memorizing and studying it. This means that you pretty much have to have the manual available for the first months you use this, or memorize the manual, or, you will not be able to use most of the features. (Unfortunately, this seems normal for most digital personal devices nowadays (except for some Apple products)).

The arcane menu arrangement does not lend itself to quick and easy use of the unit if there are constant changes to your recording requirements. For example, as far as I can figure out from the arcane manual you must press two separate buttons, a total of five times in order to something really simple like erase a recording. I erase more recordings than I keep and this is a real time vampire.

Other than that the plusses are that it supports Vista 64 bit, and, contains all of the features of the WS-400. The unit is easy to snap record conversations and other items. One feature I really like is that it comes with its own, easily replaceable, NiMH battery. If you keep this unit plugged into your USB port, it will repeatedly charge the battery. (It is a REAL advantage that it doesn't need its own docking station to charge, or, new batteries every few hours of use).

It is a good buy at the price and easier to use, with all of the features, even with its drawbacks, than any of the other small personal recorders I've looked at over the years by other manufacturers.

Specifications:

Recording Format: WMA
Input level: -70dBv

Maximum working output: 60mW (8 ohm speaker)

NAND FLASH memory 2GB - this unit works excellently as a flash drive with VISTA 64 or 32.

MIC Jack: 3.5mm mini-jack; impedance 2k ohms

EAR jack: 3.5mm mini-jack; impedance 8 ohms or more

RECORDING TIMES:

STXQ mode 34 h 30 min.
STHQ mode 69 h 40 min.
STSP mode 139 h 25 min.
HQ mode 139 h 25 min.
SP mode 247 h 10 min.
LP mode 544 h. 55 min.

80 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My new, useful toy, August 6, 2009

By 

David J. Morrison (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Olympus WS-500 Digital Voice Recorder (Silver) (Office Product)

As a musician, singer/songwriter, I started to find a need to record my music ideas. My phone has of late been recording a lot of small samples, but I wanted something with better quality. After asking around, Olympus seemed to be the best option. I first came to Amazon and felt confused by the different options. When I went to Olympus's website regarding their Digital recorders, it was a big help. They have charts which compare their models and it was easy to discern what models contained what features. I wanted a model that could plug into the computer and had two mics for a speaker effect and that's what I got for a good price.

So regarding the actual recorder, like I said the 2 mics are nice for recording guitar, voice, piano... etc. Not the best for drums, but you could have figured that out. It's not flimsy, it fits into my pocket and it takes 1 AAA battery that can recharge (provided). It's a pretty straight forward piece of hardware and the only thing I ever needed to use the directions for was how to charge it (hold the stop button as you plug it into the computer, otherwise it just opens files and doesn't charge). I like that it can just plug into the computer with the switch on the side but they also give you a cable incase you're using a desktop (sometimes USB's aren't in the best places).

Anyway, the only thing I would mention to someone buying this is that the speaker doesn't represent the quality of the recording. I mean look at it. It's about 1.5 inches in diameter... if even. Plug it into your computer/headphones/or speakers and you can tell the difference immediately. I like that I could rename files on my computer and then it stayed like that on the device because it records things as numbers with dates and times. Oh, and I really haven't used it for this, but there is a way to use the device for playing MP3's which is pretty nifty. Not really necessary if you have an iPod and it isn't going to replace your iPod anytime soon, but cool nonetheless.

Hope that helps!

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good for musicians, December 16, 2009

By 

Shane Scollins "ss97" (Ithaca, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Olympus WS-500 Digital Voice Recorder (Silver) (Office Product)

I bought this recorder basically on the back of the other reviews here. Up to this point I would just use my laptop and a mic, and record into my Cakewalk program. But I wanted something more mobile for when I was driving or not near my music room to get ideas down. After talking to a few people the name Olympus was the one that came up often so after weighing all the options the WS-500M was the one I wanted. I loved the idea of the internally stored USB because I hate cables that I have to worry about not losing. And I wanted something simple, and it had to have stereo mics.

On to the actual review of the product now. After realizing the rechargeable battery was DOA, I didn't feel like waiting for it to charge so I tossed in a good old reliable AAA alkaline battery that I had in the drawer. The device sprang to life quickly, I hit record and said "testing 1-2-3" hit playback and sure enough it was working that fast. I didn't even need to read any instructions at all, it was pretty much that simple. I played around with the settings and creating index marks and various other things. Operation is very much intuitive if you've ever worked with any old fashioned tape recorder.

The interface between the WS-500M and my Windows XP/SP3 laptop was flawless. It was totally plug&play, no software required. I could drag&drop any files back and forth. You can even rename a file and the name changes right on the device too. So you can do away with the random file names the device creates.

Recording quality is very good. On the highest quality setting, with the mic set to high sensitivity this little device picks up every sound in stereo that your guitar or voice is making from pretty far away. You can adjust them down and get different acoustics in the recordings giving you some flexibility. For the money this device records very high quality. Even by today's digital music standards. The bad thing is that it won't hide your mistakes and pick scrapes like analog recordings will.

2GB of storage is more than enough for me. I will never fill that up before I get to my laptop to off-load anyway. The MP3 player is a nice little feature, although I won't use it much as a true MP3 player, I have a Sansa for that. It will be nice to have the ability to upload my own songs as MP3 though so people can have a listen. The playback quality of the WS-500 is very good. MP3s and WMA both sound very clear.

I probably won't use the recharge feature much either, it tends to take so long to charge anything through a USB port to being with. I will either just keep using alkaline, or buy a lithium AAA for now until I can get a AAA recharge station. If you do use a non-rechargeable battery make sure you don't use the charge feature when you plug it into your USB. That would be bad.

The physical interface is good. The device is small, so too are the buttons. But the main buttons are big enough to find by feel. REC and STOP are both sized well enough. The screen is not huge, but you can read everything easy. Some people might like a more fancy screen with colors and pictures...well you won't get that here. Its old school black-on-gray "Etch-a-sketch" all the way. But that is fine by me. I didn't buy it for a pretty interface.

All in all, if you are looking for a high quality device at a fair price to record music this one is a great option. The WS-500M is small, portable, and easy to use.