Roland R-07 black

At its core, the Roland R-07 delivers the same excellent sound quality for recording and playback as its predecessor, the R-05. It also weighs approximately the same and has very similar size. Even though its body is all plastic, versus the R-05's metal housing, it feels good in the hand due to its rounded corners and rubberized surface.

The R-07 features a built-in speaker, unlike prior models. Therefore, it comes as a major disappointment that the speaker, even when set to its maximum volume, is too quiet to be of any use for monitoring vocals.

Bluetooth, which is another new feature, works well as far as connecting to bluetooth-enabled speakers and headphones. Connection is quick and stable, and sound quality is excellent. Automatic re-connection when turning the recorder back on is a great feature.

However, I have experienced several glitches where the recorder froze up during playback of certain files, which required restart.

When starting up, the recorder initially says "No SD-card," and it takes a moment for the device to recognize the card. In one instance, the micro SD-card was not recognized, requiring reboot. Furthermore, I find it impossible to remove the micro SD-card by hand, tweezers are needed.

For me it's the tool to record rehearsals and acoustic practice at home; sometimes to catch some interesting sounds.

Pros:
- very intuitive
- high quality of microphones
- as the result of above - great sound
- Bluetooth
- wristband can be attached
- small and compact
- I can loop any part of playback by choosing start/end of the loop
- built-in wav->mp3 conversion (bitrate range 64-320)
- Possibility to merge/split recordings

Cons:
- Built-in speaker is too quiet
- Display backlight duration can't be set longer than 20 sec.
- Max card capacity only 32 GB
- Bluetooth headphones encounter irritating lag when I try to monitor the sound during recording