Maybe the last good cassette walkman.
Written: Feb 10 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: runs on one battery, good belt clip, auto-reverse.
Cons: headset is uncomfortable.
The Bottom Line: Buy it before it becomes unavailable.
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| petermuir's Full Review: Panasonic RQ-SW48V Personal Cassette Player |
I use a cassette walkman a lot, for books on tape. My needs are pretty basic – play cassettes, FM radio, reversible, a belt clip. I don’t care about TV and weather bands, bass-boosting. It should be easy to manage by feel, and the volume knob should be easy to control, and not easy to inadvertently change. My perfect walkman wouldn’t have an auto-reverse, but would require user intervention
This walkman has all these features.
It has a *gasp* REAL belt clip – not the flippy ones that don’t clip firmly and slide off readily, but a real belt clip.
I don’t much see the need for a water-resistant cassette player.
I love having it use a single battery, rather than two. For whatever reason, there are a lot of used AA batteries floating around our house, and it’s nice to be able to drain the last few hours of power out of each one before tossing it. It ships with four batteries, which is a nice feature.
I end up going through about one Walkman every nine months, because I use them a lot, and they get banged around, dropped, etc. I have bought a spare one of these, because by the time the one I’m using breaks or wears out, this model will be completely unavailable, and as cassette players are becoming increasingly displaced by CD players, chances are that this may be the last good cassette walkman.
I have been through a couple other less expensive Panasonic walkmen. One I dropped into a tidepool and it never worked properly afterwards, the other got banged and dropped until it just stopped working. The layout of the buttons is the same (stop-reverse-forward-play) as the others, and the direction lever below them is large enough to operate by feel.
In addition to the belt clip, it comes with a hand strap, so you can use it for running. That works well also.
The headset is one of those in-the-ear type that are good for running, but the in-ear speakers are large and uncomfortable, even to my big-ol ears. Replacement headphones are easily obtained, however.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
petermuir
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Reviews written: 19
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