Philips SpeechMike Pro LFH 5274/00 Dictaphone

I do not use it, but I have had no complaints.

Not as good as expected on DNS

Not sure what the negative review was all about.It does exactly as it states. amazing quality considering the price.

I have used this,Philips SpeechMike Pro 5274 - Trackball - optical - wired - USB for some months and hate it! It has obvious design faults. The worst is that there is a delay between pressing the record button and the program starting to store the recorded speech so you can't just press the record button and start to talk as you would a mechanical tape recorder and re learning a technique of waiting a moment is excrutiating (as is correcting the transcribed letter that the poor secretary has to produce with the start of every phrase missing!). This may be a software problem but the design of the device isn't - you have to hold the record button down quite hard to keep it recording and every force needs and equal and opposite reactive force so, what is on the opposite side of the device to the record button ... another button with a completely different function!!! Elementary design disaster - who are these people? Why on earth would they think that the user would want to continually press a button to record anyway? More than once I've pressed the play button rather than the record button because, as you hold it to your face, you can't see where your fingers are. Please forward this to the manufacturer if you possibly can - they need to get a new design team on this. I'd be happy for them to contact me by commenting on my review. What is needed is a cheap, USB device that doesn't have the unnecessary track ball and more sensible ergonomics. I'd then buy it and carry it aound my organisation so I wouldn't have to use this rubbish device!

I am a radiologist and I have previously tried wireless headsets, desktop mics and other handheld mikes. I now have 2 speechmike IIs and use 2 at work. I find the speechmikes the best that I have come across. I have no experience with the series III speechmikes.Speechmike functions and buttons are completely configurable. This needs to be done properly with your speech recognition software. I use Dragon Medical. I would recommend going for the speechmike version with buttons as opposed to the slideswitch, (which I found difficult to configure). Also the version with 4 extra buttons which also are fully configurable is more useful. The device produces key press combination shortcuts which are matched with dragon functions.The device works quickly you will not have a pause providing you have the speech software running already) you get a visual recording red light on rec. I use a single button push to turn rec on and then off- not holding a button. The trigger on the underside does not get accidently pressed. I find the quality good and I have no failures in 3 years.