Zoom H1n/UK Handy Recorder

This is a great sound recorder, capable of good Foley work or voice recording via a lavaliere mic or other mics that have a 3.5mm jack; it does not have an XLR port. The recorder comes with batteries, but no cables or micro SD, so be aware that you will need these. It is very plasticky, making hand-held use problematic, but that can be solved by using a small tripod for desk work or some sort of handle to avoid handling noise. You have a fair bit of control in how you record with 4 settings available to control recording level - between 40 - 50 is best, with other controls to guard against clipping, but apart from recording level, you can leaver the default settings alone, most of the time. The recorded sound, in my experience, can sound a bit hissy, depending on the amount of gain used and headphones used, but the actual recording imported to an audio editor is surprising clean for a recorder at this price point and a lot of professional use this handy little machine, which is some kind of endorsement. All sound recording devices, especially field recorders have some limitations and I'm sure that this does also, but for most amateur film makers who want to record sound off camera, this device is very good, with several other zoom recorders to graduate to, when you have exhausted the possibilities of this one.

I used this recorder for the 1st time the other day and have to admit I was extremely impressed! I play bass in a ukulele orchestra and wanted to record our practices. When we practice there is a large table with around 15 people. The boss sits at the far end from me and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to hear him on the recording. I was wrong! Despite the recorder being close to me (and my bass amp!) it picked up all the instruments and also the instructions shouted from the far end of the table. The quality is so good that everyone else wants copies to practice along with! I used the device in auto adjust mode for the volume. This worked really well. I also love the fact you can record as WAV or MP3. I prefer mp3 as I’m only recording for practice purposes. It is extremely easy to get the clips off the device. Just use a usb micro cable and you can save them to your PC/Mac. There are more advanced features but I haven’t used them yet so I can’t comment on them. I am going to use the recorder with my other band tonight. It’s a four piece with guitar, bass, drums and vocals. I’ll have to see how it holds up to all that volume!

First off, I use mine outdoors with a dead cat style wind shield, It records mostly Urban sounds, often Railways and Trains and does this more or less faultlessly on a constant manual setting of between Gain 6 to Gain 7 without clipping. The faults are all with the various "auto" settings that I never use anyway. For one if you switch on the Limiter to reduce the loudest parts, it changed the Gain setting to a somewhat higher sounding one (very noticeable if you are monitoring it with headphones), the limiter and the Auto settings also seem to try and adjust the very quiet sounds, trying to make them louder plus whatever noises are behind them, an example is background urban roar is constant until a bus goes by in the distance, it will raise the level only slightly but also the background roar. The low-cut does similar too. Often the limiter/Auto settings will have a delayed effect too, example loco and first two coaches go past before the rest of the train is quietened a lot, destroying the whole effect. As I have it on full manual settings these issues never effect me. The all round audio quality is very good, putting the camera's inbuilt mics to shame. Stereo is a rather wide stereo for close up out door work, but great for our in the open field so to speak. Battery life is good, but I do carry a spare set as battery indicator can drop to one bar just when you're ready to start a long recording session. The H1N uses two AAA Alkaline batteries. Also a micro SD card for storing it's recording internally as well as having an output socket for a camera a 3.5mm Stereo, but this is very noisy (hissy). Two years on and still using this as the main mic. I record it all on here and sync it up in post edit. I really enjoy using this microphone.

Arrived very quickly. I brought it with me at the studio at my band's rehearsal to test it. The quality of recording is excellent and no distortion whatsoever (I had used my phone before but the recording was distorted and the quality was mediocre)! Other pluses, it's small and portable and it's easy to use too!

Marvellous little recorder. Records very clearly in high volume situations. The bundled Wavelab and studio software are good value and useful for trimming, normalising and mastering files. I used it for recording drum tracks and the sound balance between drums and cymbals was excellent. Also great for live recording of band rehearsals. Just place it in the room and the results are amazing.

Very versatile sound recorder. Good sound quality with excellent stereo channel separation. Love the input/output sockets which offer lots of recording/playback options. I like the overdub feature which allows you to layer sounds on top of each other multiple times. A good well made product at a very good value price.

I was an absolute guinea pig , a newbie for this stuff, but since my first recording, which worked amazingly enough, after inserting a card, the batteries and choosing auto level and the red record button, with no knowledge, I got an hour long recording of bird song. Amazing! Since, ie. next day, I have looked at the YouTube beginners videos and got really sophisticated, lol! I wanted to record bird song from my neighbours two tall fir trees, so that I could identify the birds by their songs. Put the recorder in a sheltered place with the recommended settings and really pleased. Next I am looking at how to listen to the recordings on the Mac. The on board speaker is only designed for quick checking and needs an external speaker for enjoyment (or disappointment according to how you did!). I put a power pack into the bottom right socket (no sophistication here) and it saved the batteries which went quickly after my very long recording and looking at settings the last time. You can mark the recordings in playback but a clap does the job just as well. Enjoy. Just bought another for a family member before this one disappears!

As a recorder, I would rate it as being worthy of 5 stars but with the experience I have had, I don't feel that would be right. It is an excellent recorder with which I had some trouble because of a) my lack of digital knowledge, b) the fact that a suitable microUSB cable is not supplied with it and c) the inadequate response from the maker's customer services. I could not get the USB and card reader facilities to work. I contacted Zoom's customer services who said there was a fault, so the recorder was replaced. The replacement was no better and Zoom's customer services, who took some weeks to actually respond, were perplexed and still considered there to be a fault which would necessitate yet another replacement. A neighbour eventually solved the problem. It seems not all microUSB leads are the same - some will only charge items whilst others will both charge and carry data. Unfortunately, the leads look the same, something the computer industry has been remarkably stupid about. Long and short, I bought a microUSB cable rated to carry data and the USB and card reader facilities both work perfectly. This would not have been a problem if Zoom had supplied a suitable microUSB cable with the recorder. Not doing so might be considered penny-pinching. Neither would it have happened if the computer industry had not made identical looking microUSB leads to carry out different functions. Why not make them all capable of charging and carrying data? There is an assumption that everyone in this digital age knows what's what and what they are doing. How wrong that assumption is. How wrong of me, too, to think that customer services for a company's product would know what they were talking about. Zoom's customer services fell far short on this occasion.

Adoro questo microfono er quanto sia versatile. Lo uso: collegato al pc per le videoconferenze, in tasca collegato ad un microfono lavalier, sopra la mirrorless collegato sia via cavo che standalone. Qualità dei materiali ottima, comandi semplici ed immediati. Lo comprerei altre 1000 volte.

Ha llegado muy pronto (demasiado en realidad: Las previsiones de entrega de Amazon son de cachondeo) y está muy bien. Graba con sorprendente buena calidad y el cuerpo, aunque plasticoso, parece bastante resistente. Ese detalle de la construcción de plástico me hace pensar que el precio debería ser menos del que se pide, pero es lo que hay. Esta que me llegó era de 2a mano pero esta en prácticamente en perfecto Estado. Tan solo he notado una marca trasera que en realidad no sé si se la here hecho yo. Me parece una buen artículo y una buena compra. Aunque por cierto, viene con la versión 1.21 del plugin cuando en la web de zoom el más actual es el 1.9... Esto y otras cosillas que esta haciendo esa marca dan bastante mala sensación. Pero bueno, este producto es bastante bueno y merecen la pena.

Very sensitive microphone, smaller than expected but great quality device

I would absolutely not recommend this I would never recommend this for anyone because this is the worst thing that you can buy the sound quality is super bad and I don’t know there are much better recorders than this Don’t spend money on cheap equipment people say that this is very good to use in paranormal investigations ghost hunting well I don’t agree

Portatile, resistente, fa una differenza enorme. Ho lo zoom h6, ma uso molto più questo ormai! Sia per le dimensioni, sia perché oggettivamente regge il confronto. Per lo zoom h6 ho comprato lo shotgun e lo uso per cose un po’ più “estreme”.