LinuxMusicians

Hey hey, this is not strictly computer periphery, but I didn't find a better place.
I recently broke my old Zoom H4N and am now looking for a replacement. I am blind so anything which is either very simple or has something like speech menus.
I'd be happy with a stereo microphone which could directly record to a built-in memory chip or SD card. I loved the H4N's ability to change the microphone angle, but can live without that luxury. I'd definitely like a lot less self noise. Desired price range is up to about 230 EUR.
So far I have ssen the old Olympus ls-p1, which has speech menus. Its noise level is lower than the Zoom H4N, but I wonder if I can't get any better. I've heard the Zoom H5 is also better, but I'd wonder if I would pay unnecessarily more for loads of features I don't need.
I have consiidered a smartphone solution, but I can't mount the containers on my current iphone/ios on my Linux system. Last time I tried, I failed.
Do you have any ideas? Creative suggestions? My usecase is really for a handheld device which can be ready spontaneously. I'd be happy for any pointers or suggestions, including a change of subforum.
Best wishes, Jeanette

Hi,

I like those small voice recorders too like the olympus mentioned. I use the sony ones that also record wavs. I've done spectral analysis with my little sony voice recorders against well known small recorders (sony pcm-m10 tascam dr70) and found the little voice recorder sounds really good, and transparent to my ears but has very slightly less information in the lower and upper parts of the spectrum. It has a slightly higher noise floor, very slightly, so when recording with very low noise mics the more expensive recorders have that much less hiss in extremely low ambient recordings which is great.

Here's the recorder tests
http://www.avisoft.com/recorder-tests/

If I could use the little sony voice recorder at 48kHz I would use it more but it only goes to 44.1kHz

EDIT: The other positive of voice recorders over small handhelds is they often have directional mics in x-y making them useful for musicians. Also they seem to be easy and quick to setup and are small etc. The (old) sony ones have built in battery charging for AAA rechargeables making that much more useful. And tiny, these things are tiny. So cool. The current sony is sx1000 or the a10 and they have built in lithium cells.