If you don't want to buy external mics, the H2 meets the needs you've described to a tee. I've heard the H2 and it really gives great sound for such a small little unit and less than $200. You have the ability to activate all 4 mics in surround mode and set that sucker right in the middle of the table and you're good to go. The sound you get will I think be VERY adequate for your podcasts...in my case I heard an acoustic guitar player use the H2 to record their own practice sessions and I thought the H2 sounded very ncie...far nicer than I expected from onboard mics and a package at sub-$200.
I'm not sure how it does on batteries, but honestly that's the least of your concerns because for $25 you should pick up a 15minute quick charger and some rechargeable AAs and be done with worrying about power.
Now, if you were into this a little more heavily and were thinking highest quality sound, then external mics would be in order. That runs the gammut but you didn't really ask about mics, so I'll just stick with the recorder. In that case (using external mics), yeah I agree that the R-09 is a good choice. You have to keep in mind the reason that people are gonna recommend the R-09 on this list is simply because it's a good recorder for recording music files onto (which is what 90% of the people on tapersection.com do) The R-09 has a very low noise floor, it has a good A/D converter, etc which meets the needs of the music archivist.
But these may not be the things that you are most concerned with as far as meeting your needs. The on-board mics of the R-09 by the way also provide a very nice sound given that they're on board mics. However, it's only two mics and they don't operate in surround mode. They're probably omni-directional mics though, so maybe it doesn't matter. If they're cardiod mics (check the R-09 specs) then they would be more limited in their ability to pick-up off axis sound that the surround mics of the H2.
My two cents.
Topic: What Should I buy? (Read 2279 times)