Review on Enhance Your Recording Experience with the Sony ICD-PX312 Digital Flash Voice Recorder by Justin Sherman

I've had this device for almost 2 years now. I wear it on a cord around my neck and use it constantly throughout my workday to take notes. I work in outdoor retail and have found the device to be very reliable, even in wet environments (e.g. clothing), although it doesn't have specific waterproof specs or ratings. Menus and features are average and well thought out overall. The MicroSD expansion card is suitable for recording large amounts of audio. Battery life is good: Works great with NiMH batteries, although their slightly lower voltage means the battery life indicator maxes out at 3 out of 4 bars, never full. The sound quality is good, the speaker is quite loud. The Rec & Play buttons are shaped differently so you can tell which is which without looking at the device. Use a small engraving tool to permanently carve them into the plastic to avoid confusion. In addition, with heavy use, a thin, strong nylon cord around the neck pulled, after about 6 months a plastic corner hole/strut through which the pass loop was issued. (It's rubbed off.) I used a two-part epoxy ("Plasteel") to gently build up the excess at the corner. Just before the Plasteel epoxy was fully cured, I stuck the end of a paper clip in to make a hole for the lanyard. Since then, the reinforcement has been perfectly preserved. When used with a MicroSD card, the device takes a long time to turn on (> 6-8 seconds). That's access. and until the boot process is complete, you will not be able to record. However, because the unit has a configurable 60-second to 60-minute hot-standby feature (meaning when it's ready for immediate recording), you can tolerate a power-on delay. There is no backlight. ----Updated 2014-01-10----After 2 years of regular heavy use, I hung the device on both the inside and outside of my shirt during heavy landscaping, gardening and carpentry work (even in humid and rainy weather). the neck began to fail. fail. It records well, but now playback has become unreliable, jerky and stuttering. I opened it up to see if there are any loose connections inside, they are not visible. Given that this device is *not* weatherproof and weatherproof at all, I think it handles the harsh environments I've used it in pretty well. Soon I will replace it with another similar model.