Review on Zoom H2n Portable Recorder with 5 Built-In Microphones, Stereo/Surround Sound, X/Y, Mid-Side, Ambisonics Mode, SD Card Recording – Ideal for Music, Video Audio, and Interviews by Xiaomeng Chang

This is an absolutely fantastic little device. It came out half a century ago, but even with huge technological advances in other areas (smartphones, computers, etc.) this thing is really holding its own and will be a great product for years to come. This thing is like a little Swiss Army. All-purpose recorder. You can record high-quality tracks right on the device itself, you can import those tracks into your favorite DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for further processing, you can use it as a great little USB microphone, and it even doubles as an audio interface with a stereo input . There are some great mic configuration options. You can adjust it for X/Y, middle side, 2ch and 4ch, easy to adjust by rotating the small dial. A pair of handy LED indicators let you know which side(s) of the mics is/are active. The same indicators flicker when the signal is clipped, which is a very good visual indicator. Plus, it can be mounted on a tripod, or you can buy a very cheap mic stand adapter for around $10 that allows you to mount this device on a mic stand (and doubles as a handy grip). It has a built-in speaker so you can listen to recordings or connect headphones to the line-out. The onboard speaker is terrible, but what do you expect? This is a recorder, not a mini boombox. You can also connect a remote control, useful for creating WAV markers. I like it because a DAW that supports this feature allows you to easily navigate through your recordings. There are some useful options like auto gain (to prevent clipping etc.), compressor/limiter, low pass filter etc. and some other options. This unit runs on a pair of AA batteries and it's amazing how long the batteries last given the quality of the recording. Zoom claims 20 hours of battery life, which I find a bit optimistic, but even with 15 hours of battery life, it's great. The interface of the device is quite nice. It features a backlit LED screen and easy navigation with a selector to scroll up/down or press to make a selection. It only took me a few minutes to get used to it. This recorder uses an SD card up to 32GB for storage, which is enough for my needs. I record at 44.1kHz/24bit (anything higher I think is overkill for something like this) and with a 32GB SD card I can record for around 33.5 hours. If you record in CD quality, which is 44.1kHz/16-bit, you get just over 50 hours of recording time. A maximum setting of 96kHz/24-bit will give you over 15 hours and if you don't mind recording in mp3 format then 128kbps (they say it's CD quality but debatable) will give you over 550 hours ! 256 kbps will give you half of that. I mainly use it to record band rehearsals and even demos. Recording rehearsals has been annoying in the past, either I used a smartphone which gave horrible recordings or I used a laptop, special recording interface and microphones which gave me better recordings, but it was very cumbersome to do it lugging around computers with me. each practice/demonstration session. Also, it's annoying having to deal with all the extra wires/cables and such. Also, I believe it's a law that if you bring a computer into the mix there will be crashes and other problems. H2n solves all my problems, all I have to do is put it down and press record and I'm sure my records will sound great every time. The minuses are quite small. The biggest problem is that it only has one universal gain control, it would be nice to have separate gains for each side of the mic. One small issue is that it doesn't include a USB cable in the box (my H6 had it), I have a lot of USB cables but it would be helpful for a lot of people to include one in the box. It feels a little cheap being all plastic, but I haven't had any durability issues so far, although luckily I haven't dropped it. You also really need to mount it on something, be it a tripod or mic stand (with an adapter, not included) for best results. Recording while using the device creates a lot of noise, although it's probably just a drawing device. Despite the minor issues mentioned above, this is an easy 5 star product. 5 stars doesn't mean "perfect in every way" but "I love it!" And of course I love this business. This is a very useful and versatile device that fits in my pocket.