Well I guess it's how you use it. There are always trade-offs in any decision. I get a kick out of folks on this forum who insist that one program or device is the best. (It's usually the one that they bought ;-). The truth is that different things are often better for different purposes.The alternatives to a mechanical vox recorder are using a long play time recorder that runs constantly, a digital recorder, or a computer to digitally record things. All three alternatives cost more than 60 bucks. ;-)
I use my tape recorder to record a single suspect frequency while I'm away in order to analyze activity on it, so losing the first second of a transmission isn't much of a problem. With a simple press of the play button, I can then listen to a day's worth of activity in a few minutes. And the first second of a transmission is often open squelch anyway.
A continuous running recorder would have hours of dead space between recordings and that would be a lot more annoying to listen to than missing the first second.
A computer with approriate software would be best if you wanted to record multiple frequencies while scanning, as scanning into any other kind of recorder would result in a hodgepodge of transmissions. The computer can tag them with names, times and frequencies. But that means tying a computer up for just one purpose.
73
Gary
