New Olympus DS-3400 Digital Dictaphone

The Olympus DS-3400 is expected to be released for sale sometime in the week starting 8th June, 2009.

So what do we know about this new sleek black recorder. Well, it seems to be the replacement for the DS-3300 which was phased out earlier this year. Following the same kind of transition path as the DS-4000 to DS-5000 we see a new look, new dictation module (DSS Player Pro v5), the use of the new DSS Player Pro (.ds2) audio format and as with the DS-5000 a free upgrade if you have an AS-2300 transcription kit to an AS-2400 transcription kit, which is as yet not available in Australia (these are expected when the DS-2300 gets a bump upto DS-2400).

The DS-3400 will have support for external media memory cards, both SD and SDHC and will come with a whopping 1Gb SD card, which is alot of dictation. Like its big brother, the DS-5000, the DS-3400 will not only cope perfectly with single speaker notes and letters but should alos be good for your team meetings or focus groups making it quite an all rounder.

Security is also a feature included in the DS-3400 with file encryption available and also the device is capable of being locked via password protection, something essential for the medical and legal people out there.

Also improved are the control buttons embedded along the side within a smart chrome strip which make control of the unit a breeze.

No news on official pricing as yet, but as soon as we know I will update this entry.

For the eager Olympus price watchers out there, which is probably just me, you would have noticed that in their price changes on 1st February 2009 Olympus set the RRP of the DS-3300 to the same as the DS-2300, this was to run out their remaining stock.

This now leaves only two digital dictaphones in the current Olympus voice range, the low end DS-2300 and the top end, new design with new software DS-5000 & DS-5000iD models.

My suspicion is that the DS-2300′s days are also now numbered. We have already seen the DS-2400 on the Olympus America website for some time now, as soon as that arrives in Australia we will see the end of the DS-2300 and it’s accompanying AS-2300 digital transcription kit. When in 2009 will that be? No specific date as yet but our guess would be within the next three months so Q2 2009.

Also discontinued was the VN-3100PC, no tears shed over that decision. It was not one of my favourite voice recorders. We are still waiting patiently for the new VN-3500PC and VN-5500PC note takers to appear.