I recently bought a Zoom H1 handheld recorder.
It truly offers tremendous value for the money, and I would likely have kept it for this reason (despite the fact that the handling noise is really high and the stand-mount is just made of plastic and the threads may easily be destroyed). However, as it turned out, my sample with serial number 12xxx suffered from a high current drain when switched off. It consumed 47 mA, which means it will drain a normal Alkaline battery in 2-3 days!
Zoom was quick to respond from their Japan support office and apologized for the problem and asked me to return it for another. It is known problem (likely a failing capacitor), but unfortunately all other Zoom H1 on stock at the dealer had serial numbers lower than 20000, and could also have (or develop?) the problem. I decided to stay away from the H1 for this reason unfortunately, for now at least.
I then refocused my efforts toward the H4n (as the H2 is an older product) — but it was not in stock. So instead, after some further deliberation, I ended up with the Roland R-05 (and not the Edirol R-09HR, mainly as the additional features in the R-09HR were not essential to me and the price was higher).
As this thread is about the Zoom, I won't go into any details of the Roland R-05 here, but just refer to another post I made here on the board (
http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=140726.0) that also has a link to my webpage where a longish Roland R-05 noise test is listed, in case anyone is interested.
-- Per.