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The Zoom H2 has been a long time coming, following in the well-received footsteps of its big brother, the H4. Zoom has really pulled out all the stops on this product in pursuit of quality audio recording in such a small format. The device itself is about four inches tall, two and a half inches wide, and an inch and a half thick. In this package, you get some very serious audio mojo for on-the-go recording. Originally designed with three microphone capsules in the wire-protected top, Zoom delayed the product to re-design it with four capsules because it wasn't giving them the quality of recording they were looking for. Then they shipped it at the same price they'd originally planned on selling it for! I've been following this particular drama for some time; the H2 represents a potential solution for half the price of the next entry in the market.

There are quite a few high quality portable recording devices on the market, and most of them are in the $299 to $2000 range, and they provide quality stereo recording. The H2 weighs in around $200 and is chock full of features that podcasters and musicians should love. The box comes with the H2, a 512MB SD card, a pouch for the H2, an AC adapter, a triangular screw-in foot to stabilize it on flat surfaces, an audio breakout from 3.5 mm stereo to RCA connectors, a pair of throw-away earbuds, a screw-in 'handle' that allows you to clip it into standard microphone stands, and a windscreen that makes the device look like a small silver smurf with an afro.

The documentation is decent, with a pretty good "quick start" page that will get you going recording right away. The provided 512MB will record from 15 minutes at 24bit/48khz in four channels, to 213 minutes in 320bit MP3 stereo. Yes, I said "four channels" - the device has four microphone capsules, and you can record each of them on a different channel at 24 bits. This creates two files in the "4ch" folder, one with a name that ends in F, and one that ends in R - that's a pair of stereo recordings, one from the front pair, one from the rear pair. You can drop these into most audio software packages and mix them down to surround without much effort. It sports adjustable gain (low, medium, and high, accessible from a switch on the side) and AGC or Compression, a metronome, and a chromatic tuner. From 3.5mm jacks you can access line in, headphone out (more in a moment on that), and external mic in.

But back to the device. It has a small keypad on the front, and a small LCD. If you're like me and suffering from presbyopia, you'd better bring your reading glasses - the screen shows the recording levels and configuration options, and they put a lot of information in a teeny, tiny space. The keypad is your standard blister-pad type with the standard keys you would expect, record, play/pause, forward, backward. Then a pair of buttons that step between "90 degrees", "2CH", "4CH", "120 Degrees" - these are the microphone configurations you can choose to record with. The case of the device is plastic, but it doesn’t feel or look like cheap junk.

But you can discover the features from the manual or the Zoom website. The big log here, the bottom line, is audio quality. If quality mobile audio recording is something you need, then so is this device. The tests I've done were nothing short of amazing. Now, I'm not saying it can replace a $50k studio, don't get me wrong. On the other hand, the sound quality is every bit as good as I can get from my FastTrack Pro combined with my Macbook and some really decent MXL microphones. Far better than you can get from the onboard microphones of your video cam.

In fact, I can see this device becoming a big value-add for people shooting video. It's fairly simple to shoot video while capturing "wild" audio with the H2, then drop the H2's recording into the audio track in FCE or other non-linear video editor. I've played with this process using a cheap Aiptek "HD" camera ( I'll probably review that later, too ) and the H2, and the results are nothing short of amazing. I'll put together a sample and post it here later so you can judge for yourself, but when you consider the cost of the equipment used to capture the video and audio, the quality is phenomenal.

The stereo separation is very good whether you're using the front pair of mics or the back pair. The dynamic range is solid - again, amazing considering the context of small capsule condenser mics that are built into the device. I tend to use the 320kbps MP3 to record audio, and the encoding quality is very good. I've been unable to discern the difference between stuff recorded on the H2 at 320kbps MP3 and music recorded at 24bit/96khz on the H2 and encoded to 320 MP3 by programs on my Macbook. You can record directly at 24bit/96khz wav, and even though Zoom only claims mic response to 20k in the specs, there's a significant audio component well into the 24k range as displayed in Audacity's frequency analysis graphs. Although I don't have an audio sweep generator, so I can't test it to see how flat the response curve is, A/B comparisons with known microphones have been very positive; I recorded some samples with my MXL large-capsule and with the H2 at the same time and compared the result. The H2 performed admirably - perhaps better for some frequencies and program content, and stereo to boot.
When recording, the headphone jack becomes “live” - you can monitor the recording in realtime. This is incredibly cool in this device. I’m used to a monitor output when I record on the computer, but it can sometimes be problematic, and this device makes it transparent and solid. I found that it was live even while I was using the H2 as a USB microphone. The H2 will also serve as a solid portable interface for your computer.

All in all, I’d have to say this was one of the best $200 I’ve ever spent on random audio gear. It performs as promised, and far exceeded my expectations in quality and functionality. I don’t think you can make a better audio recording for $200, period.