Others say...

"It just works"
This recorder/player works well for me. I use it in four ways:
1. Record notes and memos to myself for later action.
2. Record meetings for later transcription into personal records or official minutes.
3. Record narrations of presentations while practicing. Those narrations are then played into Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred to be turned into typed text. I then clean up the text into a better script and paste it into the Notes area of each slide.
4. Play music when I am not working.

This product works well for me, provided I remember to switch between dictation mode and conference mode as required. A very good value for the money. My next steps will be to purchase a couple of the accessory microphones to see how much improvement they make. (That will be because "I want to" NOT because "I need to".






"Good Digital Voice Recorder"
At over $100, I thought the recorder would have performed just a little better--clarity and volume of playback was not what I was expecting. However, when I played it back through a good set of headphones, the sound was much improved. Still, a useful tool.

"Liked It So Much I Bought Another One"
I recently lost the first recorder I bought when I forgot it in a classroom at school. I was very happy with it and purchased the same recorder a second time. I purchased this digital voice recorder to tape my lectures at school. I had a hard time picking one out, but I finally decided on this one for the 2GB storage. I was very happy with the decision. It picked up my professor's voice in a big lecture room where I sat all the way in the back. There is a little bit of hissing with playback, but I feel that is expected.

"Olympus WAS-331M (2 gigabyte) recorder review"
A great small digital recorder except for 2 serious problems, plus 4 other problems:

Problem 1, starting Recording is a complex failure prone process

It is difficult to start recording. First, you have to slide the Hold switch downward, wait for the operating system to initialize the system and do a system check, then watch for the standard display to appear. At least 50% of the time the Hold slide switch fails to operate, provides a momentary pulse, then the system has to shut down. So you repeat this process until the system check is completed. Now the unit is on, then on the right side you press a momentary switch firmly, since there's no feedback from the switch and observe the red light or the display to insure that the unit is recording. Then examine the recording meter display to see if there's any amplitude reading. If there's no noise in the room then tap the mic to observe any amplitude reading, if it's there then you're recording. Otherwise, press the record switch again, because you may not have pressed the Record switch firmly enough, or the momentary had a bounce and it's not recording, so just repeat this process until you get the unit recording. While this may really seem to stupid to believe, you can get relatively fast at it, if you have good lighting to examine the recorder, and repeat the process as needed, which should mean that you can get the recorder turned on in about 15 seconds.

A simple small but well made slide switch at the upper right corner, that has three positions: STOP, PAUSE, RECORD is all I would ever need to control this recorder. For the Olympus engineers, Yes, this means no power-up switch called Hold. So when you slide the switch upward from Stop to Record, you both turn the recorder on and start recording immediately, you don't need to do a lengthy operating system initialization test, we can assume that nobody smashed the recorder with a sledge hammer.

Problem 2, the Battery Meter doesn't work

Now that you got the recorder turned on and recording, this doesn't mean that you be able to record anything, because you have no idea how much battery life is left. The tiny battery meter in the upper left corner of the screen only tells you if the battery is almost completely dead. So you could start recording something extremely relevant and discover that you recorded only the first minute of a one hour nightmare and you have no evidence to defend yourself from a legal attack by a predator later on, thanks to a nonfunctional battery meter design. So the only thing you can do is buy a lot of AAA batteries and through them away after every long recording. As a result you will spend more on batteries than on the recorder. Of course, a AA battery has about twice the capacity as a AAA battery, so the slightly larger AA battery would be a better choice in such a small recorder, even it had a slightly larger bulge over the battery area.

Problem 3, the Time and Date is lost during a quick battery change

Since you have to repeatedly change batteries due to the lack of a functional battery meter, unfortunately you have to put in the time and date each time also, because no matter how quickly you insert the new battery, the time and date is scrambled, although other options are retained in memory without being lost during the battery change. This further means that if the battery goes dead during a long lecture that you can't just insert another battery and keep recording, because the system may require you to carefully reset the new date and time.

Problem 4, the lettering on the display is too small

Unless you're 17 years old with 20/20 vision the lettering is too small to read and reinsert the Time and Date, which incidentally has to be done repeatedly. The screen size is OK, just the lettering is extra small, and there is room to increase the type size. How could this not be obvious?

Problem 5, the internal mic is not as good as the external mics

I would be glad to pay more money for a better quality microphone, that's built into the smallest recorder. When possible I do plug in the ME52 external directional mono microphone for better quality sound, although the internal mic is not all that bad. For voice recording I always record in the highest quality mono mode. An Omni-directional internal mic is naturally preferable to a directional microphone since we're not necessarily focused on the recording process or the orientation of the recorder.

Problem 6, a bright red light is not always appropriate

Naturally, you could put black tape on the bright red recording lights so that you don't advertise to any violent person that you are recording evidence of their assault, unless of course you're trying to get killed. Please don't treat us like idiot children because sadistic lawyers want to protect murders from being recorded. Right now recordings of O.J. Simpson's armed assault are being used in court, and the court recognizes that this may be the only way there will ever be any accuracy or justice in the court room.

Apparently, the people who design, manufacture or sell such recorders don't actually use them, which is typical of most products, or they use them at a brightly lit table, just to see if the product works at all. Naturally, we would be interested in knowing if there's any similar small recorder with high quality recording capabilities and at least 1 GB of memory which solved at least the first 2 of these problems.



"My Opinion"
2 years ago after much thought and research decided to purchase the Olympus WAS-321M DVR. I liked it so much that I bought the newest model even though the first one still works perfectly. I was surprised to fin that it has been updated in many small and useable ways making for a notably improved machine even though at first glance they look almost identical. If you read "reviews" on this item, you will hear some complaints: in general, I have NO complaints about this item, EXCEPT - and it is one that I have never seen mentioned: I really wish it had a MANUAL RECORDING LEVEL CONTROL. WMA/Mp3 Music sounds as good as the source material. I bought rechargeable AAA batteries for this thing from www.all-battery.com which have worked great. In short: I LOVE THIS THING.
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