Sony Walkman WM-FX290 Personal Cassette Player

Pros: Small size, long battery life, lots of features.
Cons: Consolidated buttons/features.

I recently purchased the Sony WM-FX290 AM/FM Stereo Cassette Player to listen to while on morning walks. If you’re considering this unit, you will hopefully find this review very useful. First the overview: The Sony WM-FX290 is a slim and ...

Pros: Pretty good design, nice style, main features work well
Cons: It has a bunch of useless features

Sony Walkman WM-FX290 This walkman has FM/AM radio, reception of some TV stations, a weather band, and a tape player. I know that most people these days prefer to wear iPods or at least portable CD players, or other digital machines, but I like to ...

Pros: Battery efficiency, tuner quality, size/weight, low price
Cons: Useless weather band, fiddly radio presets

I bought my first precorded cassette in 1973--ELO's first album. That's how long I've listened on cassette! We all know cassette technology is dead, and CD's appear to be on the way out in this day of MP3's. However, there are millions, maybe ...

Pros: best mechanical non-auto-reverse player
Cons: bad tape window, odd door opening, some periodic cellphone noise

This is a decent cassette player in a field of crappy cassette players. The really good ones cost much more. This is probably the best cassette player that still has mechanical buttons and mechanism, which means it is much more reliable than the better players with electronic buttons and mechanism. It also doesn't have auto-reverse, and thus avoids all the complication that auto-reverse brings. Battery life is great. It is quite light and compact. The radio is hard to figure out, as usual. The window for viewing tape motion is too dark to see through. The door prys open from the side, which is awkward - one's hand expects front-opening. It picks up some periodic cellphone noise, not as much as cheaper players, not as little as expensive metal-body players.

Pros: Has TV/FM/AM and weather reception. Good tape playback.
Cons: Overloaded FM reception and Poor AM reception. TV and Weather is ok.

This walkman was bought for $40 and the reception on this walkman in the Norfolk and Virginia Beach area is terrible. Most of the local radio
stations overload on this tuner. When you want to tune in to a station in NC on 96.7 you get intermodulation problems when you're in the Military Circle area. You have to use a short headphone cord with most headphones to avoid overloading. The only way to remedy the problem is that you need to set the DX/LOCAL switch to LOCAL, but the reception on local radio stations is still crappy. The AM is not good and it does not pick up weak signals you have to use a loop antenna that's tunable. Playing tapes is fine, if you bring your bulky boxed collection of tapes and find tapes to buy. Made In China.

Pros: Yes its slimmer lighter to carry but?????????? [see below]
Cons: The tv part stinks

I just purchased it sine my 481 I believe got tossed out by mistake[ouch] this I find very different from that one and it is rather annoying I cannot get tv channels 2,4,5, barely get 7,13, seems 9,11 are ok.
My reason for purchasing the other was to listen to tv sometimes my other was auto reverse which was a great feature this model does not have it, a pain when you are listening to a cassette and must have hands free to turn it over--

Pros: Not many to be found. The audio is good.
Cons: Two batteries are better than one as found here. Radio tuner is crap at best.

This radio has no where near the tuner found in the old FX281. I own both and only use this for tapes. Also I liked the controls on the old model better. Might have been more buttons but it was a better design. Sony made a cheaper model at the same old price. Cut those costs by any means.

Pros: nice size, good features and the battery lasts
Cons: not the same layout as the old Sony FX281

The player is the upgrade to the FX281. I liked the 281 better because it had 4 buttons on the front to seperate the different bands - I liked that more - but of course Sony thinks consolidation is key - that is their choice.
Overall it is a good walkman to use.