Panasonic RR-US450 Digital Voice Recorder

I use a Sony cassette recorder to tape fairy tales and songs for my 3.5 years old child. It turned out to be quite annoying to change tapes so I decided to switch to a digital voice recorder with large recording capacity and good search, not achievable on any cassette recorder.
I have decided to buy Panasonic recorder because many customer reviews were very positive about the sound quality of Panasonic RR-US395. As that model is discontinued and almost impossible to find, I have bought Panasonic RR-US450. It is very light and compact, has search dial and miniature joystick for play/stop and adjusting the volume (it was extremely easy for a 3.5 year old to learn the record, playback and search controls), however I would not be able to use all the common features like adjusting the volume or changing recording quality without a manual. I would want this device to be usable in the dark - lit-up buttons and display would be great. Also I could not download the recordings by simply plugin in a USB cable from recorder to my computer, I'm required to install special software for that - it's really annoying. But the most disappointing is the sound quality. The speech sounds clear and distinguished but there is some noise like hissing, the trebles are way too high. Probably it's because the speaker is very small. Well, you cannot expect much from a speaker that fits a square inch. One of the important features for me was playback speed control. It's really there but surprisingly as you change the speed, the pitch of voice does not change. One other feature I miss - a neck strap or a clip so this small device does not slip out of the pocket.