Best Audio Recorders

Looking for an audio recorder for Podcasting?  Here is a detailed breakdown of the important features to look for:

• Sound quality - Quality is important!  People won't listen to your Podcast if they have to strain their ears to understand what is said.  Get one with High Quality mode (sometimes known as HQ) or better.  For the tech-savvy, that would be 44.1 kHz sampling rate and around 128 kbps bitrate or higher.  The very best would be a recorder that does uncompressed WAV audio at 16 bits or higher.
• Audio input connections - Built-in microphones usually pick up too much background noise to provide sufficient quality for Podcasts, so be sure to get a recorder with audio input jacks.  If you only plan to produce monologue-style Podcasts (i.e. featuring a single person only throughout the entire episode), then a microphone (a.k.a. Mic) input jack will suffice here.  But if you plan to do Podcasts with multiple people, as in an interview, you'll need to hook up your audio recorder to an audio mixer board, which will require a Line input jack (a.k.a. Line-in.)

Also, check out the Buyer's Guide for Voice Recorders for general recommendations and qualities to look for, regardless of the recording purpose.