Photo courtesy of Samson

June 1st, 2010 – Not content to rest on its Zoom H4 and H2 laurels, Samson has released the Zoom H1, a seriously small digital recorder capable of 24-bit 96 khz recording. While it’s not going to be competing against Sanyo’s six freaking microphones, it’s still an impressive piece of kit. With the H1, it also looks like Samson has eschewed the utilitarian look of its siblings for a streamlined look.

The Zoom H1 has dedicated buttons for most of the controls which is awesome; you definitely don’t want to be fiddling around in the menus while recording. The only that might be nice is a rotary volume dial instead of the up and down buttons, but I’m really just splitting hairs here. I still prefer the H4′s XLR inputs though, even if it’s not designed as well ergonomically speaking. Regardless, at its $99 MSRP it’s a steal, and an indispensable tool for burgeoning songwriters who don’t already have a digital recorder.

Zoom H1 via Gizmodo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 3:30 pm.
Categories: Asides, Gear.

2 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Lucas

    Can anyone make a recommendation on a cheap portable recorder?

    I want something just to record my bands weekly jam sessions. Not for producing the music, but only for going back over what we played, and listening to the improvised parts.

    Given that the jam room would have a high SPL, (drums, 2 guitars and a bass), what features or options would you look for?

    Jun 4th, 2010

  2. Sean

    @Lucas: I would recommend trying out the Samson’s Zoom series. They’re cheap and people seem to really like them. As long as the recorder allows you to control the input gain, you should be good.

    I personally use a Sony PCM D50 but that’s probably out of the range you’d like to spend.

    Jun 6th, 2010

Reply to “Zoom H1 : Samson goes even smaller”