Customer Reviews:
 Retro Style Without an On/Off Button March 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The styling of this product makes me laugh. In appearance, it's a throw-back to the 1970's transistor radio. Functionality is quite fine, although as a few others have noted, it is slightly non-intuitive. The one thing I don't like is that it does not have an on/off button. You can however, place it in 'hold' mode which turns off the display.
 do not do it February 28, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
It is so very tiny you can't put a finger on the extremely tiny buttons I tried to stop the delivery 5 minutes after I purchased and Amazon and ANT whom I got it from all but ignored me and sure enough,,there it was anyway at my door...a week later I opened it, reluctantly...ugh..can not even hear the sound all the way up!!!
One step forward, two steps back February 19, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
You would think a technologically advanced company like Sony would make great progress over time, but judging by the ICD-P520 they have actually taken several steps backward in important areas since I bought my ICD-70 about ten years ago. My aging voice recorder has been serving me most faithfully through the years (and still is!), even though I have dropped it many times and it now has rattling parts inside and looks quite battered.
The main reason I bought a new recorder recently was to make sure I had a replacement ready when my old one is bound to give up some day. I'm not unhappy with my P520 but looking at ergonomy and user friendliness my old recorder is clearly better. Not what you would expect after ten years.
The ICD-70 had a very good ergonomic shape fitting the hand perfectly with good access to all important controls. Try googling "sony icd-70" and you'll find a picture immediately. Compared to the P520 it had larger and easier to use buttons, it showed both the time and date for recordings where the P520 displays just one, it was much easier to select folders, it had a jog wheel that allowed me to select and play back messages in one place and it had a display light.
The most annoying - and perplexing - difference however is that the P520 needs up to three to four seconds processing time after a recording has been finished! There is no immediate response to pressing the stop button after a recording - you have to wait till processing is finished before you get your beep.
If you're not watching the recorder (which will be the case in many situations) you won't know for several seconds if you actually managed to hit the quite tiny stop button or not. And of course you can't start any new recording during this waiting period. My old ICD-70 does all this instantaneously and it is hard to understand how Sony can produce a much slower product ten years later.
That said, the P520 delivers a vast increase in recording capacity, it has fewer mechanical parts and the recording button is now recessed, meaning my quite frequent accidental recordings are a thing of the past. It also has longer battery life and better sound quality.
Fortunately the accompanying PC software really shines compared to my old recorder. Recordings can easily be transferred to your PC in native, MP3 or WAV formats. But even high quality MP3 files have a notably lower quality than the originals, so much so that I would recommend against using MP3. A nice software function lets you increase playback speed, a very useful feature for journalists like myself when working with recorded interviews. You can also access all recorder settings from the program.
Because of the decline in ergonomy and user interface I would give the P520 no more than three stars. But since it offers excellent value for money and has good software, I'm awarding four stars - with some doubts.
As a final point the P520 will definitely do the job for most people looking to take notes or record interviews or lectures. No need to buy a much more expensive model with functions and frills you'll never use.
Good deal, decent recorder. February 9, 2008
This little thing got a lot of features packed up in there. It's a great recorder. The only complaint I have is that it picks up cell phone signals and it records a buzzing sound whenever something's coming in, or going out through your phone. Making it extremely annoying, and it's difficult to listen to the recording that way. Other than that, it's a great product. Just make sure you place it nowhere near a cell phone.
Voice recorder February 9, 2008
This voice recorder enables me to download lectures onto my pc and to make copies of them if I wish to. I can listen to myself rehearse a topic and critique it for improvement and clarity. It has been a great purchase and a good investment.
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