I had the mrs4 a couple of months to play around with. This was a 4 track battery machine that dumped on smart media flash cards and good value compared to the korg equivalent. At first I thought the sound not too good because it used compression similar to mp3 to fit on the cards. But after a while I warmed to it for a recording toy for someone with a keyboard or guitar in their bedroom who wanted a drum machine too.

Then I tried this 1044 model with the cd burner. It offers very good value indeed, the only down side was small display, and fiddly editing with the cursor buttons. But there is a lot on offer for the money. If you can record in long takes and do not need to bounce tracks too much it is fine. The other thing is they need an update to usb 2 really because usb 1.1 is a little too slow to backup huge wave files. But then you have the cd burner built in.

I only got rid of it because the keyboard now has usb audio, so burning a cd on the laptop is actually quicker and just as easy really but with the advantage of no analogue stages at all.