I want a digital voice recorder

I want a digital voice recorder that can allow me to record lectures! Some lecturers really aced at speaking but failure in preparing slides. The result? Bunch of students scribbling text onto their empty lecture notes while the lecturer is speaking. For slow writers like me, it is really like listening and writing and copying what the person beside me is writing.

Got to keep my eyes peeled for one which can record from a reasonable distance with a reasonable to superb quality and battery life that would allow me to record up to at least 5 hours on a single charge / battery.