Zoom H1essential

I bought this as an upgrade to my H1 first generation, received it today and called a saxophone playing friend to try it along loud percussions, and the "32 bits don't bother the gain just play" was immensely satisfying. We made two quick tests to find the right relative position and just peed the rec button and improvised, the result was as advertised, no clipping. Very handy recorder and an amazing upgrade to the previous generations. My friend who's also a producer and a sound engineer was pretty convinced too, and will probably get the H4essential or H6essential - despite the self noise which is not a problem in most contexts but we're sitting about a tenth of the price of a sounds device mix-pre6. This model is a must have for quick field or jam recording or backup ready to solution.
As a sound interface, unlike previous model it has dual recording and playing so it might be a cheap sound interface except it seems to be limited to 48 khz operation in this mode.

Quickly tried the overdub, it's fun and can come in handy, but only operates on 48KHz and had a few limitations. It is not destructive on the first track your overdubbing, that is it creates a new track with the overdub. Would be awesome to have two more tracks when overdubbing instead of one : the isolated overdubbed track and the mix as reference, to be able to properly mix later in a DAW.

As a hand device, even using the handle that came with the H1 accessory set, it's a bit delicate to not create noise, even squeezing a bit too tightly the handle results in heavy extra noise, the mics are very sensitive to the wind including the one when moving around, and without a pop filter you have to keep quite a distance to the mic to avoid clipping - so for short range voice either use a pop filter or external microphone, and for the wind or waving quickly the microphone from one side to another maybe a good rycote-like protection will be necessary.

Nevertheless, for my main purpose which is some girls recording and live musician recording with the least hassle, it definitely fits the goal, offer some extras and it's a huge upgrade to the previous versions. 5 stars overall, only 4 for quality because plastic, self noise and sensitivity to hand operations (no problem on a tripod) but still that's too be expected given the price tag.

I suppose it could run on a USB power bank which is great because with a 64gb card you're good for me than 21 hours of recording in 96kHz.
A perfect set of accessory would include charger/power bank/cable/tripod/bag for the recorder+accessories/adapters for mic stand/a stereo splitter cable/pop filter+adapter/foldable headphones

Wish there was at least some level control, even just input padding. Noise is very noticeable on quiet sounds. But it does its job.

The killer-feature of this recorder is its size and the fact that you don't need to setup levels — take it out of the pocket, turn on (relatively quickly), it's already recording into the buffer, push the record button and start saving the sound + a few seconds before it.

Bought as a "bring anywhere recorder". The sound quality is about on par with the H1N. Build quality is also about the same- adequate.

32bit float is convenient, but the noise floor of the recorder is quite high, so the usability will vary depending on how loud your sound source is.

I have found it great for recording louder sources, for recording spot sounds and fx I would otherwise miss.

The inbuilt mics are a little too noisy for quiet location field recordings, but, because it has plug in power and a 3.5mm jack input, you can plug in a set of stereo omni mics like those made by Lom, Micbooster etc.

So, overall, a very usable device. The self noise is easily offset by the convenience, the ability to use external mics, and for the convenience of the device.

My use case is primarily for field recordings in urban environments where there is a lot of noise, and where the device's small size is a big advantage. I also use it with binaural mics and it's equally good with those