The Olympus DM-20 digital IC recorder could have been the must-have gadget for executives except for a fatal flaw - the lack of removable storage for voice and music clips.
It is curious that Olympus chose to go with building in 128 megabytes of internal memory rather than allow users to slot in removable media - such as the Secure Digital or SmartMedia cards used by its less sharp-looking predecessor DM-1, or SD Cards.
As it is, the DM-20 will store more than eight hours of crisp voice dictation at its highest quality setting, which can be stretched to more than 22 hours if some sound quality is sacrificed. It will also store more than 50 minutes of music.
Just as a dictation machine or MP3 player, those attributes barely justify the hefty HK$1,680 price tag, but when one considers the fact that holding just a dozen tunes will eat up more than half of the internal memory and cut the amount of dictation that can be recorded by half, the DM-20 falls far short of its mark.
That is a shame, because in many ways this is a Lexus among digital voice recorders. It has a cool metallic finish, and boasts a sharp and informative LCD display back-lit for extra clarity.
The on-screen menus allow the user to choose between three quality voice-recording settings and two different microphone sensitivity settings for different environments, and cycles through pre-set and user equalisers when in MP3 player mode.
Olympus voice recorders - both analogue and digital - have always excelled in sound pick-up quality, and in this department the DM-20 can hold its own. The built-in microphone can pick up voices reasonably well even in noisy environments.
