Rewind Cassette Player Review: The Best Portable Tape Player

Cassettes bash person a lukewarm and distinctive sound, though—once you person a sensation for airy hiss, you whitethorn find yourself missing it successful cleaner formats. The unsocial trouble of skipping songs gives the medium format a primacy nary different mean can—you whitethorn find yourself learning to similar songs you'd person skipped. (While penning this reappraisal I realized Liz Phair's “Crater Lake” is an implicit banger.)

For the collector, cassettes are inactive comparatively inexpensive and affordable successful an epoch erstwhile you spot a vinyl transcript of Billy Joel's highly meh 1980 medium Glass Houses marked astatine $25. Also, they look chill and consciousness bully successful your hand. In short, collecting cassettes makes consciousness due to the fact that they're readily disposable and only the 1% tin feasibly cod MiniDiscs.

Being Kind to Rewind

The Rewind has a precise sturdy aluminum lawsuit and a built-in artillery that recharges with USB-C. It weighs 14 ounces, conscionable a small little than 2 iPhone 15 Pro Maxes. In summation to the headphone audio out, determination is simply a 3.5mm audio successful truthful you tin grounds your tapes—you whitethorn find it amusive to astonishment that peculiar idiosyncratic with a homemade premix tape.

I've owned a half-dozen cassette players since falling into the hobby due to the fact that I bought an aged Suburu with a breached CD subordinate that ate my transcript of Desire. The Rewind is acold and distant the best—I similar it truthful overmuch that I inactive usage it to perceive to my tapes portion driving adjacent though I sold that Suburau and present person a stereo with CarPlay.

Anyone who's ever had to re-spool a 100 feet of tangled tape, praying there's not a tear, understands however important it is to person a reliable transport. The Rewind has ne'er eaten a tape, dissimilar fractional of my different players. There are immoderate large vintage players retired there, but unless they've been wholly cleaned and refurbished you tally the hazard of 1 anemic constituent causing cascading failures. A high-end refurbished subordinate volition outgo astatine slightest arsenic overmuch arsenic the Rewind and you won't get immoderate of the added modern features.

The rewind sounds arsenic bully arsenic immoderate portable subordinate I've heard, which is to accidental it reliably reproduces the dependable of the cassette, pops and hisses included. That's adjacent existent erstwhile you usage the Bluetooth relation to broadcast your tapes to wireless headphones. I'm 1 of those radical who doesn't recognize the entreaty of streaming a carnal medium—if I wanted to perceive a integer mentation I'd conscionable play it connected Apple Music—but it's bully to person the enactment here. I was capable to easy brace the Rewind with a acceptable of JBL Tune headphones, but I wasn't capable to get it to enactment with my car stereo, alternatively relying connected a 3.5mm cable. The audio is muted utilizing Bluetooth compared to wired headphones.

A Little Hiss

The lone contented is the deficiency of auto-stop erstwhile the cassette has tally retired of drawstring rewinding oregon fast-forwarding. The mediocre small centrifugal continues to whir distant with an unpleasant squeal that besides means the portion wrong whitethorn beryllium stressed. The subordinate doesn't vessel with headphones. I paired it with an inexpensive set of wide Koss headphones, but I was besides sent Rewind's Bluetooth headphones which I was precise unimpressed with—the vintage look is cool, but they person a flimsy consciousness and flimsier dependable for $50.

Those are each comparatively insignificant gripes, though, considering everything the Rewind does amended than anyone other close now. This French cassette subordinate is the champion successful 2025, and depending connected the collecting trends, that whitethorn extremity up making it the past champion portion subordinate determination is.