Cassette player/Converter

Wo! What a lovely little unit this is. The size is just like the old slim Walkman style (nice and compact). For the £20 this is great value for money with amazing quality and durability too. Comes with software for windows, I am using Linux Mint and I had it working in less than a minute as this thing powers by USB when plugged in. I used Audacity in Linux and started to make the first cassette into digital format with no issues at all. The sound captured was amazing and even after 20+ years of gathering dust, they still sound great.

I found some old cassette tapes in a box in my loft and wanted to listen to them as they likely contained songs from my youth. Didn't have a tape player so got this as added bonus of being able to connect and record on my PC as needed. PROs - It does it's job, it plays cassettes. - It's cheap. - Arrived quickly and well packaged. - Recognised natively by Windows 10 and 11 (no faffing with setup) CONs - There is a noticeable hiss on playback. - The earphones are very, very cheap and uncomfortable. - USB cable was faulty when arrived - had to use a different one to be recognised on PC. - No power adaptor included - Application included is Audacity, which is free to download online (and made by another company). - Even using brand new high-performance batteries, the playback sounds slightly slower than it should (could be due to age of the tapes though?). Overall, it's not bad - get what you pay for. It does it's job but there will be better units out there or different options. You will need to use Audacity's features to clean up the recordings after transfer. Also noticed a number of other companies selling the exact same product with a different branding so seems to be a generic unit re-sold by numerous retailers.

Bought this to convert a few old pre-recorded tapes I had and did not want to get rid off until I had replaced them with CD versions, but for the cost of one CD I could convert all my tapes to MP3. Gadget looks cheaply made, all plastic apart from the mechanics, but the software works well and the quality of the subsequent MP3 is pretty good - may not be to audiophile standards but good enough for playing back through phone or media streamer. Would suggest using a power adapter rather than the battery as mine seemed to operate better (and longer) on electricity but it did work using just the battery to begin with.

Truly awful sound quality out of this. I wasn't expecting much, but it's even worse than I imagined. The tape plays too slow and while I don't have the means of measuring it, the wow and flutter sounds truly awful, and I'm not even remotely close to an audiophile. There is also absolutely awful noise on the recording, noticeable during quiet parts of the recording. This noise is noticeable even when playing with no cassette in, so it's clearly from the device, not the tape. The mechanism also feels horribly cheap and nasty. The auto reverse has triggered a few times in the middle of a tape, though that at least seems to have stopped after running through a few tapes, perhaps once everything loosened up a bit. The sound quality however has not improved, and if anything the slowness maybe worse the longer I use it. I have some old tapes and I wanted to find out what's on them - this will do the job of letting me know what's on them, but getting audio which is actually listenable is beyond its abilities. Even allowing for how cheap it is I can't give this more than 1 star - it's just not fit for purpose, and will likely go back for a refund. Sadly it looks like all the similar items available are rebadged versions of the same thing.

First the good news: the player connected easily to my Mac (Mojave) and was recognised immediately as a "USB microphone" - so it was accessible to any app using audio input. It played samples from several old cassettes with no physical problem. Less good was the quality of music playback. The pitch did not sound steady and the equalisation was poor (too much treble). I expect to be able to fix the latter using an app with its own equaliser; not so sure about the pitch wobble. I have several tapes of speech content and will start with just those, which sound fine. At the price paid for this device, I'm a little disappointed, but not upset or surprised. Similarly I don't see anything here that will help deal with Type II (chrome) tapes or tapes with Dolby encoding At this price I don't think one should expect either, but it would be friendly to include some advice about digitising them. I wasn't at all convinced about operation on battery power and I didn't find the direction control slider did anything useful, but I don't care about either of those features and am not investigating any further. The product description is somewhat disingenuous. This device is a player with a built in analogue to digital converter and a USB interface. Converting to MP3 files relies on an app; the recommended one is Audacity, but you can choose another. Some software is supplied, but it is on a mini-CD, which is no use to me at all. That needs a CD drive with a tray rather than a slot and I don't remember when I last had one of those. I doubt it matters because the only app mentioned is Audacity and that is freely downloadable. Better advice would be to ignore the provided copy and download the latest suitable version from the Audacity web site. (The manufacturer's download site is not very helpful.)

One person said that the player is slow: not true. Like all Walkman players, they slow down when the battery is nearing its end. Replace the battery and you're up and running. It needs an old style USB cable. You may find one in the draw where your phone cables live? I did. Once that is fitted and plugged into the mains, you'll have no problem with speed or any other feature and you can use a power bank instead of batteries. This player costs a third of what a normal Walkman will cost and is well worth it. Also you need to bear in mind that if you play 40 year old cassette tapes they need to be rewound before play to avoid 'tape salad and that the sound is not the same as it is with modern high quality downloads. I'm very happy with mine and would buy it again

I have been able to listen to tapes that I thought I wouldn't be able to.

UPDATE: I've had to return it due to a fault. But, I don't think I'll replace it because it's quite flimsy. Not sure I can record the cassettes with the noise from the unit either. Bit disappointed. As a pro musician, I wanted to compile a little bundle of recordings from my teens. Lessons, practise, early band rehearsals, all recorded on about 50 cassettes. I could have bought a used original track recorder but seemed a bit OTT for this. Found this great little recorder and for 17 quid thought I'd give it a go. Works absolutely great! Brilliant! I didn't use the CD software, you can download it anyway. It's just Audacity, which is pretty good. I actually ended up using my Logic software, as it's just what I'm used to. Worked perfectly, no issues. Unit seems OK build quality for the money. Not sure if it would survive a fall off a high table, but it's fine. Came with usb lead and doesn't need batteries when connected to the computer, which was an unexpected bonus actually. Very pleased with it overall. I'm looking forward to getting my old recordings all in mp3 format. So far, it's been amazing listening back! Highly recommend this product.