Belkin Voice Recorder for iPod review

It's very rare that Apple is sufficiently impressed with third-party peripherals to write its own software for them.

However, this is exactly what it did with two new Belkin devices for the iPod. The Voice Recorder and Media Reader were launched on the same day as iTunes for Windows, and Apple simultaneously announced an upgrade to the iPod firmware to allow users to take advantage of them.

Both devices plug directly into the iPod - the Voice Recorder into the headphone and remote control ports, and the Media Reader into the dock port - and significantly expand the iPod's capabilities.

The Voice Recorder is a tiny device, yet still manages to squeeze in a microphone, speaker and status LED. Using it is simply a matter of plugging it in and waiting a few seconds while the iPod switches into voice-record mode. Pressing the button in the centre of the iPod's jog/shuttle wheel starts recording, and pressing it a second time pauses it.

While recording, the iPod's screen displays a timer indicating the current length of the track. In addition to the play/pause control, a second menu option allows you to stop and save a recording. Once saved, recordings are named according to the time and date they were made and stored in a Voice Recordings folder on the iPod. The next time the iPod is synched, the recordings are copied to the host Mac and added to its iTunes Library.

Voicing concerns

Despite its simplicity, however, getting the best from the Voice Recorder does require some experimentation. The temptation is to hold it as you would a dictaphone, but we found this resulted in unbearable distortion. Placing it on a desk between those being recorded produced the best results, although there was distortion even when it was a few feet away from someone talking at normal volume.

There's no way to adjust the recording level, either. We'd like to see an update that allows you to check recording levels by means of a graphical meter and adjust them accordingly.

The Voice Recorder is competent at eliminating background noise, so that when placed on a desk between two people having a conversation in a noisy office, it picked up the conversation and reduced the background hum to a low level.

The Voice Recorder's speaker is disappointing. We didn't expect great things from a device this small, but it proved to be next to useless. However, this isn't a serious problem, as most users will listen via headphones or from a Mac.