JMDictate Professional Dictation – Review

Our rating:

By: JMDictate - Professional Dictation

Version #: 3.0.1

Date Released: 2009-05-22

Developer: JOTOMI GmbH

Price: 9.99

User Rating:

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I do a lot of my best thinking at times when I don’t have pen and paper near by. Sure it is easy enough to pull out my iPhone and start typing but, at times, even that isn’t even convenient. For those times, voice notes are a huge benefit. And those are just the short notes.

The fact is, dictation is tremendously useful for many of us and many professionals rely on it constantly. JMDictate promises professional level dictation software right on your iPhone.

The controls are excellent. The buttons are big and easy to use. The app responds quickly, has easy navigation and allows for overwriting of recordings at any insertion point. Add to that the ability to use voice activated recording that starts and stops recordings whenever you pause and you have a pretty impressive piece of software.

Messages can be emailed, uploaded to idisk, WebDav and more. The newest version also supports digital dictation workflow systems.

Impressive except for one thing. I didn’t find the quality of the recordings to be very good. I tried recording stright to my iPhone using the mic and my wife thought it "sounded like a rocording from the space shuttle". (Yes, it was that bad. Thinking it might be the mic on my iPhone I plugged in a wired headset with an inline mic and used that. While it was a bit better it weas not good.

Wanting to make sure the sound on my iPhone wasn;t at fault I pulled out two other apps- QuickVoice Pro and Note2Self and recorded the same messages/text with them. The difference in quality was noticable. To be fair, neither of those apps have near the functionality of this one but, on the basis of sound quality alone, there is no competition.

Personally I was more than a bit disapointed with JMDictate. Everything works well but I, for one, could not listen to and transcribe a long message if it came in with the quality of sound the app has been giving me.

Fix that and the app is a winner. Until then, however, it has promise and potential but it is potential not yet reached.

Quick Take

Value: As I found it currently not high. Fix the sound and it will be very high
Would I Buy Again: Not until the sound quality improved
Learning Curve: Low. The interface is clean and clear. Setting up uploading accounts is easy
Who Is It For: People who need professional quality dictation software
What I Like: Nice features
What I Don’t:  Sound quality

Final Statement: Much t like here but I cannot recommend with the current sound quality.