Panasonic RR-US500 Digital Voice Recorder review
Not a bad device. Works as advertised. Can record 10 hours of audio. Sound quality is decent, and playback is also good, even from its small speaker.
The only complaint I have is of the software that’s used to download the audio files onto your computer. First thing, the file format is in Panasonic’s own proprietary format, and you’ll need to convert them to mp3 as a second step. Second thing, the user interface is very annoying to use, the creators of the software trying to make the software look “cool” - with a god awful colour scheme, rather focus on making something stable and logical. This is typical of products developed in Asia, the software doesn’t go through significant stability and user input tests and is just pushed down the throats of customers.
Months after not using the software, I needed to start it up again to listen to some notes. It wouldn’t start! Just some useless error about it “not being installed correctly”. So fine, I uninstall it, and reinstall it. It works again. Then try it again the next day, and same thing! The software stopped working. What the hell?
Final verdict - the hardware is good. The software sucks - Panasonic really needs to have a more thorough review of their software before releasing it with their hardware.
One other thing about Panasonic… NONE of the recorders on the U.S. site have the driver software available for download. Support sucks!