I have to say I'm skeptical about this recorder. In my experience as a guitar player, Zoom has been the maker of cheap effects pedals in the flimsiest casings you've ever seen (contrast with Edirol, made by the same company that makes the indestructible Boss stompboxes), and the picture seems to indicate that this is the case. The feature set they're offering and price seems to be a little too good to be true. I'll bet those mics are crap, and/or the pre's are noisy, etc. I'll be receiving my R-09 next week and will have no doubts that it will be superior in every way to this recorder, other than lack of USB input, 96khz (which won't matter anyway if the pre's suck), and XLR jacks. MAYBE this will be a more effective bit bucket than the Microtrack, but that is my most optimistic hope for this device.
Believe me, I've been taping for 8 years, the R-09 is as close to perfect as a stealth recorder has ever come that was under $500 (my Oade mod PCM-M1 was awesome but darn pricey, and didn't do 24-bit
), and just by looking at the Zoom model, I can tell that's not going to change.