Customer Reviews

Sony ICD-B500 Digital Voice Recorder with 256 MB Built-in Flash Memory

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've only had this for a few days, but my intial reactions are:

Very compact and fairly easy to use.

Good price for a Sony product.

The instruction manual is a mess and needs to be totally re-written and re-organized.

Would be nice if it came with a carrying case, even if a cheap, basic one. I bought a cheap cell phone case to house it in.

Sound quality is good; with the mic at high level I find it picks up too much background noise but at low level it's pretty good.

After using this for a couple of months, further comments are that it does what I want it to do, but one more complaint is that it takes 9 button pushes to change folders. To navigate between folders should be easy, they make it complex.

As a journalist who uses the Sony ICD-B500, I can tell you I'm super happy with it. It's not going to make podcast-quality sound files, or even upload into your computer, but it does exactly what it says it will -- it records interviews with good enough clarity to transcribe later. I used this recently to do an interview with a soft-spoken guy at a crowded party, and the recording came out just fine. There was background noise, but he was perfectly audible. In my experience, this is a bargain digital recorder that's of solid, reliable quality. It's not a top-of-the-line model, but it is perfect for my needs.

The recorder has good sound and it is easy to start recording. Setting up a folder and inserting recordings into that folder is not intuitively obvious. In fact, all the features are not intuitive. You have to read the manual which is not well organized.

However, once you get the hang of it it's a good recorder.

This is a great product to record lectures. It doesn't matter where you sit in the classroom, the audio quality is great. The only problem is that you can't transfer the tape recordings to a PC, you can only listen to it on the device. It should be PC compatible.

I bought this product to record my voice lessons and practice. The sound quality of recordings would suffice for speech alone, but is not sufficient for singing. No matter how far away I am from the device, certain pitches cause the sound to become horribly buzzy and full of static. Plus, it's made out of the cheapest plastic in existence.

I like the fact that the recorder is so lightweight and easy to move around with. However I think that software and accessories to download voice recordings onto my computer should have been included as part of the package.

How can a digital product these days have no facility for syncing up with a computer?
What if you want to email sound files for transcription?
What if you want to back up?
This is useless!

This recorder is compact, easily portable, and records sound well. Some digital recorders I've used result in tinny voices without much depth, but the Sony is fairly true to natural sound. The price is also reasonable for the quality.

What I don't care for about it are the following:

- battery life seems to be short (average two months with intermittent use)

- buttons are almost flush with the casing, so you have to look at what you're doing with each recording. I would have preferred the "record" and "pause/stop" buttons to be elevated slightly so I could activate by touch.

- erasing is not that intuitive. Although you're supposed to be able to hold the erase button down firmly and erase the recording, usually I have to start playing and then press the erase button twice.

- organizing in folders seems overly complicated. I have to read the instruction book each time.

This should be one of those Infomercials where they sell it for 14.95 because it is not worth what they are charging for it. If it was offered at 14.95 then maybe it would be. The sound is absolutely horrible. No quality at all even with the mic vol way down. You might use it to record grocery lists or something but it is not much better for anything else. The user manual is not very good either. It was given to me for a Christmas present so I guess I don't need to be complaining too much. I wouldn't buy it though.

I purchased the IDB500 recorder. Very unfriendly usage, user manual not easy to understand and quality very poor