Battle of the Mini-Recorders?

[NoelEiffe]

It looks like there's competition brewing in the cheap mini-recorder space ... specific battle lines drawn against the Zoom H2 and H4...

Looks like competitive products from Tascam and Yamaha, perhaps others...

Any attendees who get their hands on these, it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on competition to what appears to be a sort of unexpected runaway success over the last year?

[MikeRivers]

There are at least five new ones at the show this year. In addition to TASCAM and Yamaha, there were offerings from Marantz, Olympus, and Kaysounds (whoever that is). I suppose we should count Sony, who first introduced their new D50 at the October AES show, but this was its first NAMM showing, plus their first showing of a new stereo mic that's an ideal companion for these recorders if you want to use one with an external mic rather than the built-in mic setup.

I don't know if this is a product that has been in development throughout the industry for a couple of years and they all sprouted at once, or if some chip was announced recently that made designing these things very easy. Anyway, now we can talk about which one is best. ;)

Incidentally, Zoom was holding a drawing every hour during the show, giving away H2s. I haven't won mine yet.