Zoom H4essential

I was excited about using this recorder - having previously owned an H4n a decade ago, I knew it would be reliable and easy to use.

My main use case is recording music remotely and recording my live performances. In both cases I'm focussing on performing, so I just want to set up, record and no longer have to worry about it. In the first instance, I've had several instances of the resultant wav file having about 10 seconds of audio followed by silence for the rest of the file.

Yesterday I had a performance and was recording sound from the mixing desk and the inbuilt microphones for a room sound. After pressing 'stop', the loading wheel remained spinning. I left it for as long as possible while I packed down the stage. Unfortunately it was completely crashed and the only way to get anywhere was a hard reset (removing a battery). Therefore I lost 49 minutes of recording.

I've tried several SD cards, formatted them on the device and had similar results.

I had a Zoom H6 and I wanted to try the essential line, but the H4e doesn't even get close to the quality and the functionality of the old H6. The recording quality of the H4e is abysmal to say the least. The "miraculous" float technology adds tons of artifacts & floor noise to the sound, rendering a boxy, thin copy of whatever it is you are recording. The stunning aliveness of the H6 is an old memory while the files recorded with the H4e are muffled, deprived of natural dynamics, unconcerned by treble or bass. Can't believe that an upgrade of an old product could go so wrong. It took me less than an hour playing with it, to decide and return it. I believe in 20+ years of buying gear, this is my first return ever.