Zoom - Handy Recorder

Doing full-time video and photography there are a lot of items you should have with you to make sure you're able to catch every moment, and some people tend to forget how important audio is! This has been a perfect sidekick for my Foley and other audio capturing needs. It's amazing, the quality you get from this tiny mic is insane for the price! Definitely a 10 out of 10 recommend!

One of many advantages of this recorder is that I can mount it on my camera rig as well separate from my camera specially on interviews (with an external mic) or when recording live music events. This model in particular offers a great value for the price.

I bought a Zoom H4N before the H1N. In fact, I wrote a review of the H4N that concluded that I probably should have tried the H1N because the capabilities of the H4N are sort of buried and - in the age of DAWs that can run on a tablet - there isn't a good reason for the full capability of the device. That got me thinking, so I went ahead and purchased an H1N just to compare the two. I'm writing this review now having returned the H4N. This is why. The H4N is a great device, but the downsides are that it is heavy; recording can take several steps, depending on the type of recording you'd like to make; and getting to settings that pertain to recording is clunky and unsuitable for serious recording. To my mind, the H1N solves these issues and makes it the right recording device for my purposes. First off, the H1N weighs about a quarter what the H4N weighs. It is very light and can be carried around pretty easily in a musical instrument bag. A trade-off to that is that the H1N is sometimes *too* light. I've almost dropped it a couple of times because of how light it is. It also doesn't have rubber feet on the back side like the H4N, which means it could slide around a bit where you put it. I wanted to be able to carry the device anywhere, so being light is a great advantage. The build quality of the H1N isn't so high that I don't care about dropping it, but for some reason, it feels slightly more robust than the H4N. Something about the H4N made me feel that it is fragile. Setup for recording on the H1N is remarkably easy. Hit one button. Now you're recording. That's pretty easy! To be clear, there are far fewer capabilities in recording on the H1N compared to the H4N. Gone is dedicated multitrack recording - even multiple microphones - that the H4N supports. That said, the H1N allows you to layer recordings. So you record a guitar, then vocals. Each time you layer, a new file is made with all of the content. That's actually pretty cool; you never lose any work. It is clear that the builtin microphones on the H1N are of lesser quality than the H4N. The recordings are good, but you're not going to produce an album on the H1N. I sort of doubt you'd do that on the H4N, either, but the sound quality is higher on the latter device. It is possible to plug a passive 1/8" jack microphone into the H1N. I haven't used this feature yet, because if I really wanted quality, I am going to use a good microphone into a dedicated audio interface with a DAW, not a Zoom device, so this point is almost negligible. I mostly appreciate just hitting one button and moving forward. The H1N has far less capability than the H4N, but that means that the interface can be extremely straightforward. The H4N suffers from trying to stuff a bunch of features into a tiny screen, and it does not work well - to the point where I simply would not bother trying to use it instead of a DAW. The H1N can do less, but you can usually find what you want to do quickly. There are still some oddities to the interface (such as getting to and using the Play menu), but overall, what you need to do to accomplish your task is typically obvious. The layered recordings you made above are a notable exception. It is difficult to find files, but if you want to do anything other than listen on the device (which I highly discourage, as the built-in speaker is pretty poor), you will need to plug the device into a computer, so this is more of an inconvenience than anything else. I said above that the H1N is the right recording device for my purposes. My purpose is to carry a device anywhere I want, set up and record with no work, and do basic recording setup tasks quickly. The H4N sort of suits my purpose, but the H1N suits it better. Frankly, if the H1N were more expensive and I hadn't had a little time on my hands to do a comparison, I probably wouldn't have bothered trying the H1N out. The H4N is a good device, and it has capabilities that are remarkable. That said, it does not feel worth using that capability to its fullest because the experience is poor. That H1N is good enough, and that's why I am sticking with it.

The only thing stopping me from giving this 5 stars is that even with Hold turned on, the dial for level can be moved and it will adjust the level. I use the H1n with a lavalier mic and keep the recorder in my pocket. I have to be very careful putting it into my pocket or it can move the dial and mess up the level. Aside from that, it has been working well for me. I haven't used the onboard mics. I set it to MP3 320k and it can record for a couple hundred hours with a 32 gig micro SD card.

My wife needed a recorder for studying and test reviews. It has plenty of memory if you use a 256GM memory card. The only thing she has a complaint about is the volume. It is not loud enough, just enough to hear but not if there's a lot of background noise. It is also a little pricey compared to other comparable recorders on the market.

I bought this so I could record voice tracks to narrate over videos. I didn't like having to do all the work actually seated in front of my computer using a plug in microphone. The quality of the recordings is shocking for the size of this recorder, and it works very well for my needs. Some things I would note for anyone considering this recorder: -It is extremely "directional." It records what it is pointed at exceptionally well, and does not pick up very much of what it is not pointed at. -It is very sensitive to "rubbing" sounds if you are holding it and it moves in your hand while recording. It has a standard 1/4" thread for mounting it on a tripod/etc, and it also has a 3.5mm input to use with a lapel microphone or other external microphone if needed. All in all I am satisfied and impressed with this recorder.

Used as a lavaliere microphone for a wedding ceremony

great product, use it daily, if you need a compact easy to use audio recorder, you found it