As a music teacher, I find this device so useful. Students respond so much better when they are able to listen back to a performance and hear mistakes for themselves. The H4 is extremely portable and the main advantage over other field recorders in it's class is that it is so many audio devices in one unit. I use it as a USB audio interface and effects unit in the studio as well as for recording live events.

Unbelieveable for the price!

It's up there with all the others, but wins hands-down because of the XLR/jack combination inputs which will accept mics (including supplying phantom power for condensers), line level and also instrument direct inputs. In a professional sound situation who wants to be messing about with mini-jacks?

The controls are fiddly and not particularly intuitive but I soon got the hang of it. The automatic gain control seems to be fine and smooth but it is easy to set your own input levels. Switching between MP3 and WAV is easy and the selection obvious with the LED's on the front.

Transferring files to a Mac was simple, just drag and drop, and iTunes will open the files instantly. Just be aware that you can apparently delete the files using the computer, but they won't be deleted from the SD card, even though the H4 cannot see them they are still there!

There is a bit of handling noise if you are clumsy with the machine but place it on something and it's fine. The mics are good, but use the phantom and plug a decent couple of condensers in and it's very very clean.

4-tracking is a challenge but I did achieve it, although it seems a bit of an unnecessary facility, especially if you're uploading to a computer, there are much easier basic computer programs to multitrack.

All in all, excellent value for money and warrants a space in anyone's kit bag!

recording quality is very good indeed.
when it's a soundcard it's 16bit, 44.1 / 48khz. ie no 24/96 joy.
when it's a soundcard and you use the mic, it always feeds some signal back to the headphones. i'd prefer it not to, when i'm putting some whacky treatments on voices and want 100% wet signal.
onboard effects are really quite neat, but not available when using as soundcard, not even mic models are available.
phantom power is available in soundcard mode.
get a £7 desk camera tripod from tesco. functional and it matches the paintwork perfectly.

build quality is patchy. my record button has hardly any play on it, the centre menu button is offcentre and, as you've probably read elsewhere, the casing and switches feel a tad toylike.

the menu system is confusing to start with. even though it has that large 5 way button, most actions are performed with the tiny jog wheel. daft, truly daft.

handling noise isn't as bad as some people have made out. yes it is transfered to the recordings, but you can minimise if you hold in such a way as you don't rub it - ie. just grip it firmly.


but despite its shortcomings it's a great piece of kit to have. can anything touch it for the price?

Well, this has to be the best bang for buck out there right now. Very high quality sound capture - easily up there with professional machines costing way way more. Impressive list of "added-extra" features - phantom power, mic modelling, effects, four-track bouncing, etc. Not to mention the totally briliant Cubase Lite bundled.

I'm expecting my 4GB SD to be compatible so long as a single take doesn't exceed 2GB - no doubt firmware upgrades will take care of this in due course.

So it's got to be a 9.

Now the cons:

Lots of handling noise means you can't use it as a handheld interview mic.
Excellent built-in condensers but high proximity effect - however switch on the limiter and forget overloads.
Cheap cheesy feel. Flimsy battery/SD compartment cover.

Nothing really serious, mind - and balanced against the totally pro sound quality overall I think Zoom got this right for the price. Very happy with mine.

I recieved the H4 late last week and after the initial excitement had passed i opened up the box and found a well packaged H4, usb lead, windshield, tripod fitting and mains adapter. I wanted to hear some recordings from the H4 in as many different environments as possible as its uses for me will not be strictly fixed. So i attached the plastic tripod attachment via the velcro straps which seem to hold the unit together fairly well. I then set-up the H4 in a science class at the back of the room. The menu and set-up functions are pretty simple so it won't take you long to get the H4 up and running, especially in stereo mode. Once you have selected the recording format that you require its pretty much a case of setting the levels (or it can be done automatically - which is fairly effective) then pressing the record button twice and away you go. I was really really impressed with the quality and precsion of the recording i got back. Very detailed, despite all that was going on in the room. I then tested the unit on a few one on one interview recordings. Again the H4 passed with flying colours, both in terms of detail and ease of use. When trying to extract all the files from the H4 back to my laptop, i decided to install the bundled software and found that it was incredibly easy to set-up as both mass storage device and as an audio interface. All in all I am very impressed with the Zoom H4 and its ability to cover a number of tasks and all for an excellent price. Great for all sorts of musicians, broadcasters and sound fx hunters. The only criticism i have for the H4 is the fiddly buttons down the side and the plastic nature of the body; but for the price you can hardly grumble.