A less well known company whose products have always been a pleasant surprise is Sharp Electronics. I have one of their cordless telephones and it is the best sounding unit in my household. Though not yet available in the US, at least one gray market importer in NYC has them in stock. Although this is the Japanese version the instruction booklet has an English section, the engraved labels on the pushbuttons are all in English and the LCD display supports English as well as Katakan characters. Physically the unit is only slightly larger than a stack of three mini discs in their storage cases.
Controls are on the top with the loading slot on one side.
The mic input port provides 1-2 vdc for consumer grade powered electret condenser microphones. Thus any direct professional mic connection will require some sort of DC blocking capacitor or transformer to reduce noise from this voltage source. I assume that one would opt instead to use a decent outboard mixer, such as a Mackie 1402VLZ and drive the MD recorder's line input. Sharp claims that the unit will record for up to 8 hours or play for 10 hours on its fully charged internal battery. Compared to all of the other portables, the MD-MS722 holds the runtime record using only its internal rechargable battery.