Yamazen Released a new Radio Recorder YVR-R304

Yamazen, one of the fabless merchants in Japan, released new radio voice recorder without official notice.

- Product Descriptions AM/FM Radio Voice Recorder YVR-R304 - Qriom - YAMAZEN BOOK(Japanese)

YVR-R304 is an IC recorder that has AM/FM radio, which seems to be an upgraded version of previous model YVR-R303 but some functions of YVR-R304 are inferior to YVR-R303.

There are 7 programmable timer recording functions, 2 X AAA Alkaline/Ni-MH batteries built in, 128 X 64 dot non-colored matrix LCD w/ backlight, 3.5mm stereo line-in/headphones output jacks, up to 8.5hrs continuous radio recording & 11hrs playback, automatic synchronized clock adjustment which works only in Japan, MP3 32KBPS / 4MB built-on memory and micro SDHC card slot upto 32GB micro SDHC card. The inch size is 4.05W x 2.04D x 0.57H, 1.76oz of the weight excluding batteries. The recording format is 32kbps MP3 stereo only. It depends on recording sources. Any external microphone cannot be used.

The coverages are 522-1620kHz on AM, 76-95MHz on FM stereo.


I don’t know what "MP3 32KBPS" built-on memory is, maybe it is missed by Yamazen guys.

USB mini jack of YVR-R304 can be connected only a Yamazen genuine accessory YVR-USB1 but currently not available even on Yamazen Direct shopping sites OMG.

Half of the pdf instruction manuals cannot be read on a computer but the other can. The file seems to be less compatible to some PC.

Sound quality of 32kbps stereo recording not suitable for music and so on for much of the compressed noise. I don't know why 128kbps or higher bit rate codecs not equipped with?



A year ago(in 2015) Yamazen released other voice radio recorder YVR-R600 which was sold on a famous TV shopping seller in Japan. The model also has some software or hardware bugs like YVR-R303, not work the timer recording function properly, recorded files sometimes erased naturally and so on. I think no or few products testing engineers assigned by Yamazen. This is already proven by the YVR-R304, current released product's information.

The price of YVR-R304 is about $93～$95 at the point I am writing this article.

I would recommend other more expensive Radio Recorders such as Sony ICZ-R100, Olympus PJ-35 or PJ-30, or Toshiba TY-RPR1. Unfortunately, those are for Japan only.