Tascam DR-100 Portable Digital Recorder

good but not great

I\\\'ve owned this unit for almost 2 months now and i think its pritty good. It has 2 xlr inputs ,a headphones output, a speaker option, and also has dual condenser and directional microphones.

Now for the bad points... At £330 its pritty expensive for somethin that is made of plastic; that has a detatchable wind cover that looks like an afro which keeps falling off because it doesn\\\'t fit properly . And most annoyingly it doesn\\\'t come with its own proper wall charger. It does say that you can charge it via usb, but will take 6 hours instead of 3 hours charge time, if you had the wall charger. So that means you will need a computer turned on for 6 hours to charge it up. It also says that you can get a charger for it, WHERE? i don\\\'t know. I\\\'ve already tried to buy one from here and ended up with a £10 incompatible one which i am stuck with.

The directional mics are pritty shocking to be honnest as when u hold the unit in your hand it picks up alot of plastic shuffling noise from where your hands are gripping the unit. The range of these directional mics are pritty small; so you may aswell use the condenser mics at the top of the machine.

Headphones are a must for this product as the speaker is not very powerful and u can\\\'t pick up quiet sounds like you could if you were wearing headphones.

But on the positive side it has alot going for it; the condenser micraphones ontop of the machine are very good. They have a good pickup range on them with the option to increase the gain 3 times from low to medium to high. All with a sound level wheel control at the side so you can put it in high gain and turn it down quite low so you don\\\'t pick up room tone.
The Dr100 has 2 xlr inputs for larger microphones with a button at the back to turn on 48v of phantom power. It also has a small input for smaller mics like news reporter microphones or for what i want to use it for, a \\\'zorst\\\' microphone.
It comes in its own pouch so u can safely carry it in a bag and not get it scratched. It has a li-ion battery which alone lasts for about 2 hours on a full charge. It also has extra space for 2 AA batteries which increases the battery life to about 4-5 hours if you don\\\'t use phantom power.
The display is very easy to use and there are only obvious buttons to press such as power, stop, record, home, menu etc.

This device is probably not the best i have come accross, but for really keen amatures like me looking to practice field sound recordings its probably the best you could look for at this price. I did mention earlier that at £330 it is quite pricey, but you would struggle to find a sound recorder that has 2 xlr inputs for anything cheaper than this. There are cheaper amature sound recording products out on the market but none of them have xlr inputs. If you are a pro looking for a really good sound recorder with xlr inputs you can\\\'t go wrong with myrantz\\\'s. They are £200 more, but they are made better and are industry standard sound recorders.

All in all a good product, but due to a few flaws i will give this product 7 stars