Voice recorders are useful in many use cases - lecture halls,  meeting rooms, making notes while travelling, interviews, among other things. Students, lawyers, reporters and writers are some kinds of people who find voice recorders useful instead of using smartphones to record, where the sound quality may be muffled at times.

Good voice recorders some with useful display, at least 4 GB memory, a micro-SD slot for additional storage, work with bith Mac and Windows machines, and are easy to operate with one hand.

The best voice recorder: Sony ICD-UX533 (compact, easy to use, clear sound recording, rechargeable via USB)

The second best voice recorder: Sony ICD-PX333 (no stereo recording, cheap)