Choosing a voice recorder for interviews (that also does the transcribing)

What matters in the room

An interview is a trust exercise, and the equipment is part of the conversation whether you like it or not. A phone face-up between you reads as a phone — notifications, the suggestion of other business. A card is smaller than a notebook, starts with one press, and records only while the button is held, which means your subject can see exactly when it is running. That visible boundedness is not a spec-sheet line, but it is the thing interviewers notice first: the device stops being a presence and the conversation gets better.

chit records offline and syncs later — useful in courthouses, basements and buildings that eat signal — and runs about a month on a charge, so the pre-interview ritual is not charging equipment.

From audio to working transcript

Every capture becomes a transcript with the membership, and ask-anything search runs across all of them. In practice that changes how you find quotes: instead of scrubbing audio for the moment they said the thing, you ask for it and get the moment back with a timestamp. The summary and next steps come back too — for a hiring loop that means the follow-ups you promised; for a story it means the threads to chase.

Two honest limits, because interviewers deserve precision. chit does not label speakers — the transcript is the words, not a who-said-what script. The working fix is the one broadcasters use anyway: say names as you go, and let the transcript carry them. And for anything you will publish, check the quote against the audio before it runs; that is good practice with any transcription, ours included, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.

One recorder, four kinds of interviewer

The same loop — record, transcript arrives, search across everything — bends to each interviewing trade. Journalists get quotes without an evening of scrubbing. Recruiters get every candidate answer searchable across a loop, instead of a memory contest after the fifth screen. Researchers get interviews ready for coding, with office hours and committee meetings in the same archive. Podcasters get the pre-interview and the debrief captured — the planning conversations that never had a workflow. The related pages below go deep on each.

Get the consent on tape

Interviews are the canonical consent case, and the standard is higher than the legal floor: most states permit recording with one party's consent, roughly a dozen require every party, and professional ethics in journalism and research expect a clear yes regardless of the map. The habit that satisfies all of it takes ten seconds and becomes part of the recording itself: press the button, then ask — "I record interviews so I can quote you accurately; are you comfortable with that?" The yes is now on the tape, timestamped, attached to the interview it covers. Our how-to-ask page has variants for sensitive interviews; the state table has the statutes. None of this is legal advice.

The kit, priced

chit one is $129, chit one Pro is $179 — the Pro is the same capture in a larger, faceted body that is easier to find by feel. The $9 a month membership covers unlimited transcripts — no per-minute meter, which matters when interviews run long — plus the digest, search, calendar and mail connections and cloud backup. Billing starts about two weeks after checkout, roughly when the device arrives. Free shipping, free 30-day returns, one-year limited warranty.