Olympus Australia this week announced a refresh of the popular WS series digital voice recorders and the low end budget VN series digital notetakers. In a surprise move, in my opinion, Olympus are sticking with three recorders in the WS series (I think only two recorders are really necessary).
Olympus WS Series Digital Voice Recorders
- WS-650S replaced by the new Olympus WS-811
- WS-750M replaced by the new Olympus WS-812
- WS-760M replaced by the new Olympus WS-813
Memory sizes remain the same across the range with 2Gb, 4Gb and 8Gb respectively. All new WS series voice recorders now sport a microSD card slot for expanded memory, handy to store other documents, photos, videos or music on your recorder alongside your recorded meetings and interviews. As is usual with a revamp the WS series shells also get a make over with a new modern look while retaining the small compact size traditional in the WS series. New key features added to the range are some new recording innovations like voice changer, voice playback and voice balancer discussed in this earlier blog post. As usual with the Olympus range both Mac and Windows are fully supported with plug-and-play – no software required to access and play your audio on any computer.
Olympus VN Series Budget Digital Voice Recorders
Both new VN series voice recorders come with 2Gb of in built memory, the VN-712PC also has a microSD card slot for additional memory expansion. Just like the WS series they can be USB connected to any Windows PC or Mac without the need for software to access and playback your recordings.
All recorders should be fully available mid to end April 2012. RRP in Australia is set as:
- Olympus WS-811 – $139 incl. GST
- Olympus WS-812 – $169 incl. GST
- Olympus WS-813 – $199 incl. GST
- Olympus VN-711PC – $79 incl. GST
- Olympus VN-712PC – $99 incl. GST