Digital Voice Recorder: Why You Should Buy One?

After careful consideration of available digital voice recorder on Amazon, I have finally purchased Sony ICD-UX533BLK today so I'm very excited to receive my order next week. I intend to use it at work when attending training sessions and also for my personal use. I'm sure you know that most people suffer from memory loss as they get older and I'm afraid it's inevitable so in order to counter that, I have to be more organized. While my smartphone apps can pretty much handle occasional voice recordings or dictations, I still think that a dedicated digital voice recorder can offer more flexibility and better performance.

Digital voice recorders today are compact in size, lightweight, and has capabilities for wide variety of purpose in both professional and personal use. They are usually very easy to use with simple one-press control button. Some may even offer advance features like voice activation and variable-speed playback. You have the option to record in different format, being MP3 and WAV as the most common. I guess this is especially important if you intend to do heavy editing for video presentation and the like. And since the recorded file is digital, it can easily be uploaded to computers for playback or even transcribed. Take note that digital voice recorders have playback capability too.

Digital voice recorder can save you time, increase productivity, and help you become more organized. For example, medical professionals can save time in entering patient's record or findings by dictating all the information in a digital voice recorder and later transcribe voice recordings into text if a hard copy filing is needed. Students working on an essay or thesis can dictate his or her ideas on a digital voice recorder and later on transcribe for documentation. The most popular application that converts audio recordings into text document is a voice recognition program called Dragon Naturally Speaking. It's pretty cool and accurate too!

There are digital voice recorders that use rechargeable lithium batteries which is super convenient (I'm not a big fan of disposable batteries!). You can recharge them using the USB cable or if you have a battery charger, you can remove the batteries from the recorder and charge them separately. A single charge can give you hundreds, and sometimes thousand, hours of recording time depending on the sound quality setting (I'd like to see your smartphone do that). This saves you a lot of money from buying replacement batteries.

Another advantage of using a digital voice recorder is capturing information during a lecture, presentation, or interview. Instead of worrying about taking down notes, you can focus more on what's really important, which is listening. You can playback the recordings as many times as you like later on. And jotting down notes to capture everything without missing small details require skill or a very good memory. With digital voice recorder, you won't miss a thing. Smartphones can also work well for you in this situation but I'm pretty sure when someone calls, it will either stop the recording or mess up everything.

Digital voice recorder is a also great tool to capture bright ideas on the spot when it hits you while you are outside with no access to pen and paper or your computer. I'm sure this happened to everyone when you suddenly thought about something and later on totally forgot about it because you didn't write it down... Or maybe because you are either driving or jogging in the park.

Digital voice recorder can have legal use as well. A recorded voice conversation is an acceptable evidence in court. So even if you didn't sign anything, if you were able to record it then you are covered legally.

One important feature I always look for in a gadget is storage capacity. Remember the days when 500GB of hard drive seem like a huge container that is almost unlikely to be filled? Well, those days are long gone because even 1TB of hard drive can be used up easily. Same is true with digital voice recorders. So even though the audio files are not huge in size, it is always nice to have the capability to expand storage capacity with memory card slot. This also makes transfer of files easier.

Overall, a digital voice recorder can be a very handy gadget that can save you time, helps you become more organized, and increases your productivity.