The battery life shines above and beyond however, I got a good 30-40 hours of playtime off ONE AA battery, and another in a bag is easy to carry along.

It took about 30 minutes more to transfer and record an entire Mini-Disc worth of music in LDP mode (5 hours)

The main attraction of this unit comes from the huge storage that it offers, I must say that the lowest bit rate is virtually offensive to my ears at least, so the best it can really do is 2 hours in mid level recording.