Olympus VP-10 - Reviews

(3.7)

23 reviews

Info

Reviewbucket.co.uk scanned the internet for Olympus VP-10 reviews.
You can find all Olympus VP-10 reviews and ratings on this page.

Read the reviews.

Analysis

For Olympus VP-10, 23 customer reviews collected from 2 e-commerce sites, and the average score is 3.7.

Detailed seller stats;
Amazon has 21 customer reviews and the average score is 3.8. Go to this seller.
Ebay has 2 customer reviews and the average score is 3. Go to this seller.

Detail

Click to list all products in this category.

Similar Items

7.10.2015

Quick review- works well, basic operation simple, but much more complex beyond that, however looks cheap, lacks accessories, and so not worth the current price of £75 in my opinion.Detailed review below:-In the box you get:• The Digital voice recorder• A triple AAA rechargeable battery• USB extension cable• Basic instruction manual (23 languages)(No ear phone, case, or USB plug adapter provided)The pen shaped voice recorder can be considered like a high capacity USB flash drive (4GB) with added recording and playback functionality. It has an array of function buttons and a small display, and a clip so it can be fastened to a jacket pocket.Instructions-The basic user manual (smaller than A5)has two pages of diagrams, 2.5 pages of instructions and 3 pages of standard safety warnings. The basic instructions were fine to set up the time and make the first recording. Then I thought I’d navigate the rest, just browsing the settings. I soon got lost! I googled the product and found an 80 page detailed English instruction manual on the US web site. The instructions are also in a file on the device, but as I didn’t plug it into my lap top until I’d been through pretty much all of the settings I missed this! General settings can be adjusted like the brightness of the display panel, beep indicator noises made by the device, auto power off time,Construction – this was disappointing. The device is light weight, but for the price I was expecting a metal covering or at least a high quality plastic. To me the whole thing looks cheap. The small screen is adequate, but in these days of retina displays, the Olympus display was reminiscent of space invaders from the 80s.Recording- There’s a power/hold button, to start the device (which turns off automatically after a period of time.) But you can just press the record button even when its off and it will record up to 999 files. When recording an LED lights up on the side and ‘filled circle’ icon appears on the display.Various recording settings can be selected- sensitivity, quality, anti rustle (so you can use the device in your pocket), low pass filer to remove background electrical hum, and voice activated recording so that the device turns off if there is no voice to be heard. Useful for conferences if you can’t manage to turn on/off manually between presenters. There are also settings for conference, dictaphone and meeting room selected using the scene button.During recording you can change what appears on the screen e.g. recoding level, file no. time etc.The recorder works very well. When positioned on a chair under a table it picked up sound on a telephone conference broadcast on an external speaker. A 55 min recording used 50mg of file space. I compared this to my Livescribe Echo smart pen, the sound quality was similar with both devices.Play back- the device will play back the recordings on its internal speaker or an ear piece can be attached to a jack plug socket, (but no ear phone is provided.) You can fast forward and rewind files and search on date. You can change play back settings and for example skip blank sections, alter the play back speed, and mark sections of files.Erasing files- this can be done on the device, either single files or a whole folder. I didn’t find this intuitive without the full instructions to my side. As erased files cant be un erased then I’d prefer to manage the content when connected to a pc.MP3 player-The device can also be loaded with music and used like an MP3 player. (But this does reduce the space available for recordings)Battery- the product is supplied with a Ni-MH battery and the voice recorder needs to be set to know this is the type being used. Alternatively an alkaline battery can be used and set in the recorder. An additional AC charger can be purchased. Olympus don’t recommend the use of other chargers, a bit of a pain to have to buy another USB adapter plug when so many devices are supplied with these, nor should the device be charged via a USB hub. Full instructions state 3 hour to fully charge. The outer box claims 50 battery life, does state in what mode but after a full first charge mine lasts approx. 2 hours in recording mode.PC-As it’s a USB device you can just plug it into your pc/Mac, as its fatter than many pcs/Mac the extension cable can be used to position the device without straining the connection. Once connected the recorder charges and is seen as a drive from which the data can be transferred. and play from there, or copy to the hard drive. You can turn the charging off when you first connect useful if the battery you use is not recharable. I transferred and played files on Win 10 and Mac El Capatain (via iTunes).In summary this is a very capable device which produces high quality sound recordings. It’s let down in my opinion by complex set up, cheap looking materials and lack of accessories, there's a lot of products available in this market area, many much more competitively priced..

5.10.2015

This is roughly the size of, but surprisingly lighter, than a marker pen. Out of the box, you get a rechargeable AAA battery and a USB extension cable (about 20cm); the recorder itself acts as both a standard USB flash drive and a charger for the battery, but if directly plugged into a USB port will stick out its entire length and beg to be dislodged or snapped off, hence the extension cable. As a flash drive, you have 3.6GB of storage available immediately, which is apparently good for 68 hours of recording at the default 128kbps MP3 setting; it's also capable of using .WAV (PCM audio) and WMA, as well as a "VCVA" format for voice-activated recording.Some quick tests I ran found that the default 128kbps MP3 setting is actually really quite good; I played back the files via headphones, using my PC to play the MP3s back directly off the recorder as a USB stick, and found the recordings to be clearly audible. It also has a small speaker and a headphone jack built in, but the size of the speaker means recordings are a little tinny when played back, and you're warned that using the headphone jack to play back files directly will drain the battery in fairly short order. Lastly, the manual for the device is also stored on it as a 20MB PDF file (you get a multi-language paper copy in the box too), which is extremely handy if you want to refer to something from the massive list of options.There are fairly comprehensive options for recording modes, including various options for an "anti-rustle" filter (if you're directly handling the device, or have it clipped to a lapel etc. - there's a spring-clip on it too - then the mic will probably pic up rustles from your movements on the VP-10 itself as it's pretty sensitive) and a low-cut filter which cuts out droning repetitive noise such as fans or air conditioners; there are presets for meeting rooms, being clipped-in-your-pocket, close-up dictation, and wider-spaced conference rooms which alter the combination of both filters and recording levels - all of the presets use the 128kbps MP3 format. There's also a "speech recognition" recording mode, with an "extremely low" recording level. The microphone is, incredibly, stereo, oriented to the left and right of the end of the recorder; the manual recommends you simply leave it on a table whilst recording to minimise recording extraneous sounds.Playback settings are also exhaustive; you can increase or decrease the speed of playback if listening directly from the VP-10 itself, add index marks, search for files by e.g. date of recording, perform basic volume normalisation, play back all the files in a folder, split files you've recorded, and repeatedly playback files. There is, in fact, a ridiculous number of things you can do and change, including moving files to either the pre-formatted "music" or "recorder" folders, although this if far more easily done by plugging it into your PC and just dragging and dropping files. You can also re-format the storage from the VP-10 itself, although weirdly, this doesn't guarantee deleting any recordings on it - you're advise to re-record enough silence (or anything) for the entire 3.6GB to ensure that everything is re-written.There are two things I dislike about the device :(i) Controls on the device itself are quite fiddly, I found, but well thought-out; power is switched by holding a sliding toggle, and won't cut out at all if currently recording. There are playback and menu/mode buttons, which are controlled by a small d-pad (this also doubles as fast-forward, rewind, and track-skip buttons), but this is very fiddly in use just because the buttons are all very tiny indeed; setting the dozens of options using only those controls would get tiresome indeed. You get feedback on all settings from a small LCD display on the device.(ii) It feels a bit insubstantial. It's pricey enough that e.g. a metal casing wouldn't make it unbearably heavy or hugely more expensive, but would lend it a slightly more "premium" feel.However, there's such a ridiculous number of configurable options that I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a more capable device. It's only limited by the quality of its microphones, and that's the perennial size-vs-functionality issue that affects nearly everything.

13.10.2015

The other reviews here are very comprehensive, I cannot add the same level of detail so rather than do so I'll add my personal experience instead and hope it compliments theirs. As they have said, it is lightweight and feels cheap and nasty in the hands. The display is only to be used by those with either a magnifying glass or 20/20 vision!I have been using this for a few weeks now and whilst I haven't used it as an MP3 as such, it has been tested as both a covert and overt dicta phone in my line of work. I used it whilst out and about, recording voices and true to statement, the rustling is minimal. I also went into places that didn't have voices that would be picked up and learnt that the auto function for voice detection,

29.9.2015

This is about the size of a fountain pen, complete with pocket clip. The position of the stereo microphones is such that you use it while discretely placed in your top pocket. Add in the convenient placement of the record button and you have a perfect device for unobtrusive (or covert, depending on your perspective) recording.Getting started include selecting the type of battery you have installed (slightly different voltages between types so probably quite important to get right) but the default is NiMh rechargeable - just like the one that comes with the recorderOlympus provide a number of digital profiles to assit in better recording, including anti-rustle,

4.10.2015

This recorder has many terrific attributes. First it is very compact - about the size of a pen. Yet it has a whopping 4gb of memory. Recording is simple and high quality. And because of its size, and a number of preset profiles, it can be used as a covert recording device. Transferring files is easy because one end of the recorder is a USB connector so this can be plugged straight into a computer.The supplied battery is rechargeable but you can use an ordinary alkaline battery - though you need to make a change to the settings to do that. I found that a bit fiddly.Probably my biggest issue with the recorder is that it feels plasticky and rather lightweight. I think an aluminium body (more expensive no doubt)

28.10.2019

The good bits, its light, once you have worked out how to use it, its quick and easy to use. Excellent recording quality and works really well with Dragon dictate transcribing. The not so good....the instructions are terrible, the menus are not intuitive. The really good part is that the record "button" also turns it on almost immediately.