8GB Digital Voice Recorder by Arssilee - Voice Activated Recorder for Lectures Sound Audio Recorder, Recording and Save Perfect for,Meetings,Interview,Speech- (Black)

First, the good. Sound quality is high. Low noise, and clear vocal recordings.Unfortunately, that's it.Now the bad:1) The manual is truly atrocious. I buy a lot of cheap products from East Asia, so I'm well used to terrible, undecipherable instructions, but this booklet takes broken 'Chinglish' to a whole new level. Truly, it's the second worst I've ever seen.2) Device is advertised as voice activated, but that's inaccurate as far as I can tell. Even with the internal on/off button switched on, I could never get it to start recording without manually pressing the button on top as well. When you do press the pen button on top, it starts recording and stays on and continues recording, apparently indefinitely. It never timed out and stopped recording, nor saved that recording file, even after a full minute of dead silence. It only stops recording and saves the file when you manually press the pen button on top again. Voice activated recording: fail.3) There is what appears like it should be an internal, red LED to indicate on/off status, but that doesn't work. It stayed unlit for me, regardless of charging status and button pressing, and the manual leaves you guessing about what switch configuration is truly on vs. off.4) Fourth problem is appearance. It's too fat to pass for a normal ballpoint--there are better, thinner options out there for voice-activated audio recording pens.5) Pen functionality, it does write, but the button on top doesn't actually work the pen tip, so an unsuspecting user would think it's broken and likely trash it. To extend the pen tip, you have to manually turn the chrome tip, which is unnecessary, counter-intuitive, and makes it obvious to anyone watching that it's not a normal pen. A better design would be to (I) make it voice-activated so the top button is unnecessary & remove the top button, (ii) or make the side clip slide up and down slightly to manually turn it on/off if one wanted continuous recording--which is kind of a dumb feature in a pen like this, given (a) the very limited battery life, and (b) who wants to record silence?To sum up, there are better options out there for the same price. You've been warned.

I need this so badly for work I have so many conference calls and they all talk so fast I’m getting so tired of trying to write everything down and trying to remember things when I go back later so it’s nice to have a little recording device right at the end of my pen I can record everything with Z and go back if need be I tested out today and it works

This recording pen is an absolute piece of crap. Manual is worthless and didn't receive any cable or way to transfer it to my computer. Recommend not buying this recorder.

This is a perfect pen for me to use in class because I would miss what the professor say. I can use this pen to record the lecture! Very useful pen to have for meetings too!