Customer Reviews:
 Perfect buy June 30, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I was skeptical about any recorder that could transcribe as well as straight from Naturally Speaking but I am no longer. I love this thing. Just load up on batteries and have a great time.
 Editor May 3, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I would like to share my view for this product between [1 - 10 it is a 7]
Good "Mid-range" Consumer-Grade Recorder For Voice Recognition October 30, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
If you're interested in dictation and voice-recognition, the Sony ICD-MX20 is an excellent "midrange" consumer-grade recorder. It's expensive, but nowhere near as expensive as the high-end professional-grade Olympus or Philips recorders, and I've been getting good results with it. The Sony's joystick and other controls are small, but not that difficult to use once you get used to them, and I didn't think the enclosed instructions were hard to follow at all. I'm not a real heavy user yet, so I can't say anything definite about the battery life, but personally I don't have to change batteries that often as long as I remember to put the recorder on Hold when I'm not using it. My only complaint with Sony recorders in general is that they don't come with a decent carrying pouch. The one provided with the recorder is useless and I ended up having to search around until I found a cell-phone belt-pouch I could use.
I use the MX20 strictly for dictation, so I have no idea how good it is for recording lectures or music and the like. I do most of my dictation while driving around in my car and I always use a high-end noise-canceling headset mike (the Knowbrainer Hand's Free mike which is basically the same as the more expensive Sennheiser ME3 which I use for dictating at my laptop). With this setup, I've been getting around 98 percent accuracy with my transcriptions (using Dragon Naturally Speaking v9.5 and the recorder settings specified by Nuance). Personally, I think you almost have to use a good noise-canceling mike if you want to get decent results from transcribing dictation, so if this is what you're interested in, you should count on spending another $50 to $100 or so in addition to the price of the recorder. All in all, the MX20 is probably not the best recorder for speech-recognition, but it works pretty well and it's a reasonable compromise if you can't afford $500 for a Philips 9600 or an Olympus DS-4000.
Transcribing we will go... July 16, 2007
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is one of a number of electronic devices designed for all human beings with toothpick fingers. The little teeny toggle switch on this device is insane -- the operation is difficult and the operating instructions are convoluted -- so why five stars!? Because when used with the headphone mike that comes with Dragon Naturally Speaking -- nothing works better with that software -- I'm up to about 88% accuracy in just two days. This is a most powerful tool for all kinds of writing.
 This is unbelievably bad June 29, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
As I watched the video on the Apple web site regarding the new iphone and its elegant simplicity, I could not help but ponder the last 3 months I have spent trying to understand how to use my new ICD-MX20 digital voice recorder. Several months before that I asked my secretary to review digital recorders and order me the best of the lot. She and our IS team came up with this recorder and I have come to dislike it intensely. I have no complaints about its operation. It is small, easily transported, has excellent acoustics, and seemingly will do many things. The problem is that it is a challenge to understand how to make the recorder do the simplest of tasks. For example, during the dictation of a document it is common to rethink a sentence after it is dictated and to rewind the dictating device to a specific point and redictate the section. In my mind this should be no more difficult pushing the rewind button and dictating over the text to be replaced. Sony, of course, thinks otherwise. In order to dictate over a segment it is necessary to activate a separate process. Let me read you the text in the instruction book to give you some idea of this process (and this is verbatim!).
"You can add a recording to the message being played back.
Notes
*At a factory setting, you cannot add a recording not to erase the message by accidental operation. To add or overwrite a recording, set the "Add/Over" in the menu to "Add REC" or "Overwrite".
* The added or overwritten portion of a message will be recording in the same recording mode (ST, STLP, SP, or LP) as the original message, regardless of the current recording mode setting. For more information see "Troubleshooting".
How's this for clarity? A double negative in one sentence would appropriately be interpreted as it is possible to erase the message by accidental operation. Fortunately, I had a hunch that the writer (if one can describe this as writing) did not really mean the double negative. So I spent the next 10 minutes searching the menu for either the "Add REC" or "Overwrite". After pushing almost every choice in the menu I found the correct button. Once this was activated I was actually able to overwrite a section of a previous dictation. However, the only way that I have found to rewind is to go back to the beginning and listen to the entire dictation. That is not a problem if the dictation is 30-60 seconds (although even that is inefficient), but more commonly my dictations are extended 10-20 min documents. So I am still trying to figure out how to make the device go back a short distance.
I would suggest that you not bother reading the instructions, but in fact it is virtually impossible to understand the thought processes of the people who designed the device without the instructions - there is no escaping the pain.
This brings me to my major point. This device, while a wonder of technology, was designed by someone who was intent on torturing the user by creating an interface that is at best unfriendly. To continue the process of torture, he (this could only be a male) then convinced his best friend to write the instruction pamphlet for this device. I can only imagine the glee they must have experienced as they concocted the perfect way to drive the unsuspecting purchaser mad. Caveat emptor.
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