Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

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June 19, 2005

Review: My New Olympus WS-200S Digital Voice Recorder

The WS-200S fits easily in your hand.

I just picked up a new digital voice recorder for conducting interviews and recording podcasts. It's the Olympus WS-200S digital voice recorder, and it's a pretty sweet little device. I got the idea of getting one after reading Brian Russell's experiences with another Olympus recorder, the DS-2. The WS-200S, which came out a few months ago, is smaller and holds twice the memory, with 128 megs of storage space.

Much better than the iTalk recorder I use on my iPod, which records at a meagre bit rate of 8000 bits, the WS-200S records at a solid 44,100 bits, perfectly suitable for high-quality voice recording. While it won't let you reproduce CD quality music, it's ideal for almost any other recording scenario using voice or on-the-street ambient sounds. As an example, I recorded this podcast a few minutes ago.

It's a very small device -- almost too small.

At its highest quality, you can record up to four hours and 20 minutes of audio; at its lowest, a whopping 55 hours. Later I'll record some audio samples at different levels so you can hear the difference. I may also try using an external mic for the recorder, which will improve the audio quality singificantly, though its internal condenser is nothing to sneeze at.

The device's simple button set-up allows me to play, record, pause, rewind and fast forward easily; you can also tap the play button extra times to slow down or speed up the playback without altering pitch, ideal for transcribing interviews. The only problem with the buttons is that the recorder is so small, it takes some practice hitting the right buttons.

Perhaps the coolest thing about the device is its self-contained USB key. Rather than having to carry around a cable to plug it into your computer, you simply put it apart, exposing the USB key on the inside. Then you just stick it in your computer and upload your recordings.

The WS-200S plugs right into my laptop with its self-contained USB key.

One drawback to the WS-200S is that it records audio only in Windows Media format. If you prefer WAV or MP3 format, you'll have use a converter like EasyWMA, but it's very easy: you just drag and drop the WMA file into the application and it automatically creates a new file in the format of your choice.

So my first impression of the WS-200S is that it's a really handy, easy-to-use recorder with decent audio quality -- well worth the $100 I paid for it.... -andy

Posted by acarvin at June 19, 2005 5:03 PM

Listen to a computer-generated podcast of this article