My H2 Zoom Recorder Review

While the Zoom Recorder isn't the very best handheld stereo recorder you can get I've seen a few professional models selling for 2 to 3 times as much. The H2 Zoom has twice as many mics as any other devices of it's kind. Those are two reasons why they're selling a lot of them.

Pricetag:

It's list price was a little over $300 when it came out and places have been selling it for well under $200 lately and sometimes even cheaper.

Some favorite features...

Dollar for dollar it really beats all other comparables.

Unique 360 degree 4 mic capsule feature

Small in-your-hand size - small in-your-wallet price

Couple not-so-good features:

Small display screen

It's audio limiter reacts on the slow side.

An impressive feature though is the H2 Recorder's ability to take MP3 and WAV formats and record them in several different size resolutions. But when you do want to record top quality audio for an important project it's there @ 24-bit/96kHz. Use the low memory mp3 resolution for the not-so-important events and save that memory.

H2 Zoom is for:

1. Conference and seminars.

2. Amateur & professional media people

3. Blog Podcasters

4.Fans at musical performances

5. Sessions for songwriters

6. Musicians rehearsals

7. Rehearsals for theatre groups

The front grill on the Zoom Recorder is retro looking and very reminiscent of the classic 40's microphone look. Most people will be satisfied with all of it's popular features and there may be a few that some people won't even care for... unless you're a musician like me, in which case you'll also love the handy guitar tuner and metronome that are built-in.

It can be hard to edit on the small screen... but you can just plug it into your computer via the USB and edit away.

What they call the W-XY mic patterns, 4 mics and signal processing allows Front 90 cardioid, Rear 120 cardioid and 360 polar patterns.

This is a smart and unique feature of the H2 Zoom quadruple mic capsule, which actually gives you various types of surround recording, including a format that stores 360 information onto 4 tracks which you can extract later into 5.1 surround sound. A good example of how you could use the Zoom Recorder to record a 3 piece band rehearsal would be to simply put the recorder in the middle facing the drums and behind it to either side would be the guitar amp and the bass amp, giving you a surround sound recording.

Other related products from Zoom are the H4 Zoom Hand Held Digital recorder with even more features and a bigger price tag and the H1 Zoom, which is the smallest of the "H" line with even less features and a much lower price tag as well.

For the price range this little hand held digital recorder will do the trick!