The Marantz PMD670 (with U1B designating the standard North American regional package) is a legacy professional solid-state field recorder that helped bridge the gap between traditional cassette-based reporting and modern digital audio capture. Primarily targeted at broadcast journalists, legal court reporters, and field audio technicians during the early 2000s, its physical architecture intentionally mirrors the iconic layout of Marantz's older portable tape decks to provide a familiar user experience. The device is engineered to be rugged and "journalist proof," featuring a clear screw-on plastic safety panel that covers all fine-tuning configuration switches. This design leaves only a large, red mechanical sliding record switch exposed on the front face to completely eliminate accidental runtime format or volume alterations during critical interviews.

Operating entirely as a transport-free digital deck, the PMD670 captures 2-channel stereo or 1-channel mono audio directly onto removable Type I or Type II CompactFlash (CF) cards or miniature Microdrives. It provides multi-format recording capabilities, tracking uncompressed linear 16-bit PCM WAV (or Broadcast WAV) audio alongside highly compressed MP2 and MP3 formats across selectable sample rates up to 48 kHz. For local signal integration, it features two professional Neutrik XLR microphone inputs equipped with switchable +48V phantom power, unbalanced RCA line-level inputs/outputs, a coaxial S/PDIF digital input/output, and a 3-second pre-recording safety buffer to catch unexpected speech. The recorder is built for extreme portability and can be operated away from a standard wall outlet via a removable tray holding eight AA batteries, or an external 4-pin DC input jack.