Review of my Digital Voice Recorder
Published on May 15th 2025
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About a month ago I bought a digital voice recorder on eBay (the Sony ICD-PX370). You might be wondering why anyone would spend money on a device that only records audio in a world where your cell phone can do almost anything, but that's precisely the reason. It is very refreshing to be holding something that was designed for one particular purpose, not just a bland rectangle with a touch screen. In my opinion it is a very nice looking piece of tech, it is clean and straight forward to use. It brings me back to simpler times
It only records mono mp3 files up to 192 kbps, which is... Fine. It's not exactly hi-fi audio but it doesn’t need to be. It's meant to be a compact digital voice recorder and it does exactly that. I personally love the crunchy, over-compressed sound of it's cheap microphone. It has great battery life and is super easy to use, just pull out the device, hit record, talk for a few minutes, and put it away. Most of my recordings end up around the 2-5 minute mark, and I do it mostly in my car. It also has a tiny red LED to indicate when it''s recording which I love. It's small and feels nice in the hand. It also has two 3.5mm audio jacks for headphones and an external microphone which is a nice feature. It has a playback speed adjustment that lets you listen back up to 4x speed.
I've tried doing pen-and-paper journaling in the past, but it's just not for me. It takes a long time and it's difficult for me to get my thoughts on the page efficiently. With this recorder I can just stream-of-conciousness straight into it. It is weird at first talking to thin air, but I like to imagine I'm just on the phone with a friend telling them how my day went or what's on my mind. It's nice to have space to just get things out of my head sometimes. At first I would use it almost everyday, but now that the novelty has worn off I only use it about once or twice a week. It's still a cool way to document memorable experiences, or even just mundane day-to-day stuff.
Shout-out to my partner who supported my decision to buy this thing, even if it might be a little weird. Every now and then I have even gotten her to talk into it with me--those recordings are by far my favorite.
I've never had a particularly good memory so I like to find ways to help remember things a little better. Things like taking photos, telling stories to people, or just taking the time to reflect can be helpful. The last two in particular are where this recorder comes in, it encourages me to spend a few minutes reflecting. Even if you never end up listening to all the recordings again, it's still nice just to get it out.
To wrap things up, even though the concept of a digital voice recorder may seem outdated it still brings me joy, and I think that's all anyone can ask for. If this post has made you curious the good news is your phone has a recording app built in, so you can give it a shot if you like risk free. I've also included an audio sample below and here is a link to the product page (it’s much cheaper on eBay).