Zoom H1 or Tascam DR-03
 

Looking to pickup an inexpensive recorder for v/o work in the field and occasional ambient recording. Has anyone had experience with these units? Looking for good record quality and low-noise headphone output.

I've been using a Zoom H1 for a couple of months, and I've been pretty happy with it, given the price. It does a good job for dialogue/interview work. Haven't tried recording any music with it, and I don't expect it will do a terrific job with that anyway.
It is pretty "plastic-ey" feel to it..not great build quality, but, hey its on a hundred bucks, right?

So I tried the H1. Not very solid construction. I also felt the unit was too small. And I didn't like that to perform several functions, I had to hold down two buttons at once. Lastly, it didn't provide enough gain for my external dynamic microphone. At 100% gain, I could almost reach -12db. And at that level, I could hear some noise. I just ordered a Tascam DR-07 to try that out next.