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Two weeks ago I bought an Olympus VN-500 digital voice recorder. It cost only 30 euro and can hold 13 hours of sound.
The original plan was to have a really disposable recorder that I could leave out in the woods and not worry too much. Something I wouldn't do with my Olympus LS-10. The sound quality is not great - as you might expect - but it's not that terrible either.

Plus:
- cheap
- extremely light and portable
- very well designed
- quite sensitive

Minus:
- no sound level adjust (maybe some kind of auto adjust)
- compression is audible (especially in loud environments)
- no USB - only earphone playback

But for this money it's still a great toy and I'm quite satisfied. I will try to post some samples soon.

My questions:
- do you have experience with low-fi recording devices?
- how did you make strengths from their weaknesses?
- any samples that I could learn from?

If you look at a spectrum analysis of a "silent" sample from this low-cost type of device you will probably see big spikes at regular intervals,
e.g. 4KHz, 8KHz, 12KHz. You’ll need a notch filter, (or some other noise reduction effect), to remove these artifacts.

Interesting post because I recognize this situation. I used to rely on an Olympus VN-480, one of the VN-500 predecessors. If you look at my first sounds posted here at Freesound, you will notice that the sound quality is substandard. Olympus recorders are made to record human voice and they are optimized to do just that. I've used it a lot for doing interviews and it was fine for that task but not to do anything else. It has a cheap amp that distorts most of the sounds, it is terrible at handling peaks and (like Timbre said) it brings in a lot of artifacts. Also, it has relatively little storage space so long recordings are achieved by cutting back the bit rate and sample quality and there is very little you can do about this because there are no real ways to change that (as a user, I mean). So I switched to a Sony PCM-D50 and that is an enormous difference (also in terms of price tags...).

However, having said that, I agree that it has strengths. It is pretty insensitive to wind noise, it strangely rugged (perhaps because it is not so delicate), it is cheap and I really like it because it is extremely portable. You can put it down somewhere and people wouldn't notice it - my Sony recorder is much bigger and everybody notices that I'm making a field-recording (sometimes you don't want that). It is useful in recording voices. I learned that you can use it best in situations where you record relatively simple sounds, e.g. the sound of a machine or turning pages of a newspaper. Complicated field recordings (e.g. in a city, such as I like to do) are too much, the recorder can't cope with that because the input is too high. Stick to simple sounds and you'll find the recorder to be useful. Check some of the sounds below to see what I achieved with this little recorder.

Learjet descending at Rotterdam airport:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14863

Short cityscape in Rotterdam:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=28030

Inside London's National Gallery:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=22518

Field recording Kiel:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=19799

Typing on a keyboard:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14857

Coffee machine:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14857

LG
... it is terrible at handling peaks and (like Timbre said) it brings in a lot of artifacts.

To get rid you need either a notch filter, or a noise reduction effect whch can cope with cyclic noise (de-hum).

Have a listen to the first two takes on this before-after sample, I removed the clock noise from the second, (the second take is slower too).

@ Timbre: ah, I see. It seems that recordings made with this type of recorder require quite some post-editing to shape things up.

I've uploaded a sample pack for the VN-500:

http://www.freesound.org/packsViewSingle.php?id=5889

The samples are quite noisy - I don't know yet if that's the VN-500 of some erroro of mine while copying (replaying) the files to my LS-10.
But if I hadn't had this extremely portable recorder with me all times I wouldn't have had these recordings at all.
So I think I'll keep using it for the "quick and dirty" sounds that I want to remember - just like the cheap portable camera that I always have with me. These are the most interesting ones:

Mini sound-scape:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=90419

Woman laughing - nice rhythm:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=90416

Rotterdam book market - playing old German records:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=90415

A woman telling how she dumped her boyfriend - I used Audacity to remove the train noise - nice rhythm:
http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=90410

Even for a cheap lo-fi recorder the amount of broadband noise on your recordings (above) is high.
I’ve had a go at cleaning one … http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=90455

You mentioned that your recorder does not have a USB connection: I think this is why your recordings are so noisy,
the additional stages to get the sound into your computer are each adding noise.

I’ve got a cheapo (£10) voice recorder I bought from a supermarket,
http://direct.tesco.com/p/i/technika/MP3.gif

It connects via USB, and its recordings have much less broadband noise than yours. Mine does suffer from clock noise which can be easily notched (filtered) out e.g. … http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=90456

Looking at the spectrum of your samples I suspect your voice recorder is sampling at 8000Hz,
i.e. it only records frequencies up to 4000Hz, (so everything sounds like its via telephone).
You may be able to increase sample rate, (my cheapo recorder's sample rate is adjustable from 8000Hz to 48000Hz).

the additional stages to get the sound into your computer are each adding noise.

To me it sounds like a typical Olympus dictaphone, mine has the same results but I transfer data by USB.