Tobo Portable Cassette Player Stereo Recording Captures MP3 Audio Music via USB Compatible with Laptops and Personal Computers Convert Walkman Tape Cassettes to iPod Format TD-148CA-011

I am going to try to write a review that covers both the good and the bad about this product. First of all, if you look on Amazon, most of these must be made by the same manufacturer. None of them are really what I would call high quality, but it's more about the implementation.I originally bought this one:https://www.amazon.com/Reshow-Cassette-Player-Compatible-Computers/dp/B018WBUJBS/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=tape+to+mp3&link_code=qs&qid=1617467834&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-3It failed less than a month out of warranty, but you can tell it's the same thing as this item only with a more expensive price. It also did not have the instructions that this device had explaining how to use it with a computer rather than a USB stick.I'm treating this one with kid gloves. The last one I dropped on the floor which may have hastened it's sudden death.Why is a better choice?First, it has a proper USB cable. It uses micro USB (becoming much less common these days) but has a micro USB to USB A cable. So, just plug it into any open USB port and windows recognizes it.Second, it has clear instructions on how to use one of the best free, open source, audio editors on the market, Audacity. (It even includes a copy on the little mini-cd) It took me a moment to realize that you could only hear the audio if you were recording, but just hit record in Audacity, hit play on the unit and let Audacity do its magic. You can even use the noise reduction effect in Audacity to remove the low levels of tape hiss and make for an almost CD like audio recording.Third, the price. I could buy two of these for the price of the other. I paid $17.99. Honestly, how can you beat that?So, with a combination of great price and easy use, this is a must buy if you are looking for a cassette to MP3 converter. I'm already several tapes into my collection and haven't had a hitch.

When I received this product I noticed a rattling sound in it. I also noticed a screw hole missing a screw. I put fresh batteries in and tried to play one tape. Within 10 seconds the mechanism froze. I am assuming the loose screw inside the product probably hung it up somehow. I really loved that it had a quality control passing sticker on it.Besides this glaring error, the thing is made of the cheapest plastic imaginable. I was afraid to put the batterie cover back on for fear of breaking it. Don't buy this hunk of cheap plastic crap.

This came quickly, but when I tried to connect it to my Mac I got an error message. When I did research on the meaning of that error message, I found out that no one had reliably been able to use it with a Mac, which is where I wanted to use it. Fortunately, I had an old PC laptop and it connected to it fine, and it works well with Audacity. The sound is good, a little background hiss but it is from an old audio tape.

I bought this for digitizing my old audio book tapes. I didn't want to mess with installing a driver and loading a strange piece of software on my computer, so I first tried capturing with the Audacity recording software with the headphone jack plugged into the line-in of my computer. The volume knob is a little touchy, but workable. Once I got the level set properly I noted there was a rather noticeable hum/hiss noise being picked up in the recording. I know it is coming from this tape deck, not the tape or the cord, because when I swing the same cord over to my old Pioneer stereo's and play the same tape, the noise isn't there.Since there was a noticeable amount of noise, I decided to try the USB interface for capturing, but still didn't want to mess with the driver and software, so I plugged it up to my computer running the Linux operating system (Ubuntu 20) hoping it would recognize it and it did. Upon opening Audacity I found a new audio input named [edit later to put correct name, something like Recording Input 1] and found the noise was reduced by about two thirds when using the devices USB interface.I was hoping to use this tape deck with its headphone jack fed into my handheld digital recorder for doing tape transfers while on the go, but due to the amount of noise generated by the device I won't be able to use it for that purpose. Given that it didn't cost much money and the noise level isn't so bad over USB, I'm not going to mess with a return. I'll just keep it at my desk and use it to transfer tapes while at home.

Great recorder for $20...USB directly into PC with Audacity that does the conversion. Super easy...recorder automatically flips sides at end. Great little device.

I had many cassette tapes from years past and wanted to convert them to digital! This one works great! Very happy with it..

It worked great for the 1 cassette I found that I wanted digitized. Then it stopped working :(. Got what I needed out of it. I still have it and is now on my list of "things to tinker with and try to fix".

This product is amazing. I had tapes that needed to be digitized and would've spent so much $$ to send it off to be done. The little handy recorder did the job!

Satisfied

I purchased this to convert some of the treasure cassettes into digital form. It achieves that, connects to USB port easily. But there are some problems with audio quality:1) The noise floor from the device is too high. So the digital recordings turn out to be noisy.2) The signal from the output has a DC bias. When the recordings are at medium level, it can cause problems with the dynamic range. There is no DC bias adjustment3) Build quality of the device is flimsy. Very cheap plastic.4) The included headset is a piece of junk.But given that there are hardly any choices now-a-days to buy a cassette player for converting to digital format, this is better than nothing!

Very bad system. Defective mechanizm.