Well I had to do some field research the other day for a youth & society study and I took my axim on the playground of a pre-school and used
Resco SPA (Speech Personal Assistant ) and I was able to record the kids conversations and stuff, when I downloaded the wav's back to my desktop, I had to turn the volume up high to hear it *clearly* but I could hear everything and was surprised it worked that well, so I say its a good recorder.
Resco SPA pic: