It looks like it could be a "cute" toy.

For Life

Pretty boring product, i would definatley prefer to see something smaller with built in memory and with more of a focus on recording quality. Like who really cares about the whole multi format option, i'd only want 320 or wav so, whatever. But hey, i guess alot of people will buy them & have good use for them (& they are well priced) so good on them. Plus i'm in a pretty bad mood and just want something to bitch about, i'll probably go and buy one next week.

Anyway thanks for the review guys.

i bought one, but the thing i dont like is if you record and stop and then start another track, you dont know for 100% that the previous track was saved properly...

sucks that i just bought this damn thing and now the ikey plus is out.. wack........

NIce review m8's... like the ones with the multiple opinions.

A pretty thorough review. I think the iKey is intriguing, but in the case of most of the people who frequent this site, it may not be quite up to snuff in terms of quality and ruggedness. I have noticed a lot of people up here want, and often need, for their equipment to be able to handle serious abuse and still deliver top quality sound (in this case as the final recorded product). I think that the Plus offers more of what users are looking for.

Ditto...

I CAN'T WAIT TO GET ONE!!!!BYE BYE TAPE RECORDER AND HELLO IKEY!

i-think... that the i-key needs something like this to be really awesome.....

1.- a 100gb hard drive, to rec your own shit...

2.- a 320kbps rec mode to get some good record definition...

3.- an lcd screen or some stuff to edit or maybe.... be a some kind of really weird sampling-tool-in-a-box with ovedubbing to make some interesting stuff....

sorry, but this thing looks pretty shit.

I bought this thing a few weeks ago (actually, reading that ikey-plus just got announced for the ridiculous price of $279 msrp, i'm glad i found mine on amazon.com for $109) and it's functional for what it's made to do. Depending on your applications, if you're just looking for a straight device that will allow you to record any audio material like your DJ mixes or in my test case, audio from the TV, it's fine for those who don't want to drag their laptop or a long cable from their desktop to hook up to the audio source. Agreed, it's not going to impress audiophiles, but the signal to noise ratio isn't that bad. If the signal is loud enough, then noise can be negligable in most cases. I actually prefer this method of recording now than when I used MiniDiscs for a few reasons. Recording times are greatly lenghthened with this unit in that it's not hard to find USB drives nowadays. I have a 512mb stick which will yield about 8 hours recording time at the highest mp3 setting. I was happy back in the day to even get two hours recording time out of my MiniDisc. I plan to get a 2 gig USB Flash Drive so I'll have 20+ hours recording time, which of course is overkill. Some reviews have talked about the signal to noise ratio or even hum from the recording after it's made. Like I said before, if the signal is loud enough it's negligible. When I used MiniDiscs (which sad to say mine's probably gonna sit in its case collecting dust now that I have a new way to record) I would sometimes get hum/noise if the signal was too low on top of the fact that I could also sometimes hear slight nuances of the motor (something you might hear also if you ever recorded to cassette). It was so annoying to hear that as I faded out a mix. Now I can just concentrate on reducing the hum or noise using editing software. I'd also recommend probably not using the included audio cables that come with the ikey for the supposed hum/noise issue. Since I got mine cheap (not rubbing it in), I went out and bought some Monster Cables (goldplated-DJ version) and used those to hook up to my iKey and everything seems fine. For the price point and it's basic functionalities, at $149 I think it's perfect for what it's made to do, a simple straight-to-record-digitally device that uses most USB storage devices. I don't know if I'd want to spend the $300+ or so price that Edirol and M-Audio are charging for their units on top of spending the extra loot for a specfic type of memory (Compact Flash). I'd probably buy one of those units if I was producing on top of DJing and absolutely had to have that kind of audio capability with me. I'd just as easily use my laptop and a good $99 usb-audio box to do that). From my usage, I'm happy with this unit.