Tascam Review: Pocket Studio 5

History:

Purchase: I was looking for a "beginners" digital recorder at a relatively low price. As a songwriter, I do basic home demos, nothing very complicated, and I wanted something I could record on quickly but with a reasonable amount of quality. I did some research online and the PocketStudio5 seemed to have some good features. I bought this recording unit at Guitar Center in Minneapolis and paid $400.

What I Like About This Tascam Pocket Studio 5: I think the price is reasonable. I like the fact that it is easy to send mixed MP3 versions of your recorded songs to a computer.

What I Do NOT Like About The Tascam Pocket Studio 5: This recorder was very difficult to figure out and use. The instruction manual left me confused in many cases. I was able to get helpful tips from the Tascam forums, but even with that help, I struggled to do even the most basic recording on this unit. The menu-driven operating system was too complicated. The display screen on the unit is hard to read. After two weeks of working with it and getting very little actual recording done, I traded it in for a cassette four-track recorder.

Tascam Pocket Studio 5 Quality Rating: This was another letdown. The unit looks good, but is made mostly of plastic, and things like the faders seem very cheap and not sturdy.

Review Summary: I have much more experience with analog recording than with digital, so perhaps for some more technically-minded musicians, this will be a recorder they can work with. I know many people at the Tascam forums seemed happy with the PocketStudio5. But if you are new to digital recording and expect a recorder to be intuitive and easy to operate, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

Rating of this Tascam product: 2

This Tascam Pocket Studio 5 Recording Gear Review Submitted By: ScottW.

Review Date: 2003-04-30