In January of 2011 I bought a Zoom H4n to do some voice-over and ambient sound recordings with. Although this little recorder is packed full of features, the preamps really lack the sound quality needed for semi-professional work.
In searching for a new field recorder, there was a few features that I required… clean (relatively speaking) preamps, 96/24 bit PCM wav format, large SDHC card capacity, standard battery operation with the ability to plug in external power if needed, bright, readable screen & portability. This narrowed my search down to only a few companies that offer a solid state, 2 channel portable field recorder in the $600 to $800 range.
Zoom H4n vs Marantz PMD 661