This is the first time I've written a review on a product. I've had this recorder for a few years now (more than 5). I've used it on a few occasions but never needed to go back for a recording. Until now. If you need a reliable recorder that you can refer back to for a key recording this is the one. It's simple to use, easy to upload recordings and a great value for the price. I am so thankful I have this as I'm now able to defend myself in a court case.

Works very good for recording phone conversations on a landline. I bought a Olympus digital voice recorder over 10 years ago and decided to upgrade. I'm using the Olympus VN-541PC with a Radio Shack phone adapter that plugs into the microphone jack. It works quite well. It has less background hiss than my old recorder. I also have a more expensive Philips VoiceTracer recorder, but when I use it for recording phone conversations on my landline the volume of my voice is about 3 times louder than the voice of the other person on the line. The Olympus does not have that problem. I do wish that the Olympus would give you some options for the sound quality by selecting higher kbps (kilobits per second) settings. You can only record at 16 kbps or 32 kbps. My old Olympus recorder was 64 kbps.

What a waste of money! What use is a voice recorder if you cannot pause and restart the recording? Utterly useless from a business point of view. I totally regret purchasing this product as it is not fit for purpose. The only use I can think of is for it to becuse in a student's lecture or by a journalist. For business dictation it is about as much use as a chocolate teapot!

I love the simplicity of this recorder which meets basic needs. I especially love the physical erase button. I use the recorder for recording musical compositions, which, for me, requires many retakes. I gave it 4 stars rather than 5 because the volume is lower than I would like, and I would also like it to be backlit.

This is a basic recorder, which is good for dictation and interviews, but not much else. It totally fails by not being able to pause/resume during recording. The quality of recording in a lecture hall isn't good. Nevertheless, as long as you realize its limitations and use it accordingly, it's a good recorder. It would also be nice to record in MP3 as well as WMA, or at least have the software provided to convert from WMA to MP3.

Generally, this voice recorder works fine. However. the topmost line of printing is so small to read even with reading glasses. Why can't this line of print be as large as the date/time and YES/NO lines below it? There would seem to be enough room; lots of wasted space. No instructions on how to mass erase. One at a time is time consuming. Needs a pause button; repeating is nice though.

Brokenheart. The most fundamental feature of user convenience, the pause button for recording, is missing. You see the pause icon and assume it's there, because in 30 years, you've never had a recorder without one, and Olympus has always been your recorder of choice for most of those 30 years. And it's not there. So very disappointing. Regret the purchase.

I have a couple of different voice recorders, including another Olympus (WS-821.) Compared to those, the VN-541PC is a basic, scaled-down version that's designed to be intuitive to use, with enough features to satisfy most users. You don't need to read the manual to use it - press one button to select the mode, and slide another to record. Want to transfer files to your PC? I use Windows 10 - plug in the recorder and it shows up as a removable device. The voice quality is decent - not fantastic - but decent. Of course you could use an app on your phone to record as well, but why kill the battery any faster than you need to? For the price I doubt you'll find a better recorder that's as easy to use.

I have used Olympus recoders for many years and have the utmost respect for their quality. [and I used to be an examiner for a famous quality award. :) ]. Now, I have 3 other Olympus recorders that all have merits for more sophisticated purposes.. But this one's merit is its SIMPLICITY: Push the orange circle up to start. Pull it down to stop. No, you can't pause it. But I've found that to be fine. I just stop and restart when I want. So what that it produces another recording! No big deal--when I'm playing back, it will stop at the first stop, All I do is press the play button again and it starts where I left off! And the Police Detective's review below mine describes its elegance even better than me--read it!

I am a Police Detective and I got this to conduct suspect & witness interviews. One feature made it perfect for me.....the one-touch recording. No more fumbling to turn it on and then hit record while walking up to a house. I read the other reviews and their negative doesn't affect me. I never stop in the middle of a recording. Once I hit record, it's off to the races with no stopping. So far, the quality is good enough. Thanks Olympus!