A voice recorder can be an essential tool and a great tech gift for journalists, creatives, students or anyone who needs to conduct interviews or brainstorm aloud. You can use a recorder when you have a great idea you want to explain to your future self or during an idea session with collaborators. It can also be used when you record professional interviews or conversations with family members. You could even give a voice recorder as a stocking stuffer gift for a parent or grandparent so they can record favorite family stories.

While many smartphones include voice memo recording capabilities, a digital voice recorder has a built-in microphone optimized for picking up spoken language. A recorder can organize audio files by date and time for later use. Listen to recordings easily with button shortcuts for rewinding, pausing and more.

If you want the option of using headphones, consider a voice recorder with a headphone jack. You could also find it convenient to have a voice recorder with mic input if you want to use an external mic, like a lavalier mic while conducting an interview.

If you are using your digital audio recorder in a setting with other people, such as in a business meeting, job interview or brainstorming session, you should be familiar with the laws in your area. In many regions, the law requires that you state the fact that you will be recording before you begin doing so. This is true of both audio and video recording.

Once you have made audio files with your sound recorder, you can either store them on the voice recorder itself or compile them on another device. If your recordings are for an important project, it’s always a good idea to have backup copies. For example, you might keep one set of files on your laptop or tablet and store a duplicate set on the cloud or an external hard drive.

There are some models of voice recorders with memory cards. If you are using one, a memory card reader may be necessary for transferring files to other devices. You can also keep spare memory cards for long recording sessions or extended research trips.