Review on Jensen Portable Stereo Cassette Player With AM/FM Radio Sport Earbuds (Yellow) by Ryan Nguyen

Remember when you wanted your first Walkman in the 80's but your parents were too poor to buy you a Sony or Panasonic? and you yourself e.g. audio design? Here it is. Yeah, I got excited too when Sony recently announced the anniversary Walkman, and it was a goddamn MP3 player. Now to the product at hand. These are bare bones. The radio is ok, the headphones are junk (maybe you already have better headphones somewhere in the junk drawer). You get PLAY, STOP and FAST FORWARD. That's all. As mentioned in other reviews, the player is up and running quickly. A small jeweler's screwdriver will solve THAT problem once you find the small hole under the belt clip. The player has two outputs. A headphone output with volume control. The other is the "line out" which is NOT controlled by the volume knob. The headphone jack is annoying. It has that electronic hum and hiss that I remember hearing before the tape signal gets through. And the volume knob isn't the biggest. When you turn it on from silent mode, the soundstage shifts from hard right or left until you hit full volume. The problem is that playing at full volume can rupture your eardrum. I tested the player with headphones from Koss, Sony, Bose and Panasonic, including some earbuds. Headphones with built in volume control helped but the sound was ok. Nothing surprising. What was really a HUH moment was when I used LINE OUT and hooked it up to a Bose portable speaker. The sound wasn't bad! I then tested LINE OUT with some headphones with volume controls and found the sound quality to be MUCH better than through the headphone jack! This leads me to think that this is designed to transfer analog audio to a computer's sound card. Also, you can't walk with it. It doesn't have "shock protection" so don't shake it too hard. It may not be suitable for running, jogging, or anything that involves heavy pushing or shaking. MY VERDICT: Is this a good Sony from the 80s or 90s? No way. Is it worth the price? Yes. It's the best you can get for $20. This is Yugo. It gets the job done but doesn't look pretty, and there are plenty of features like offset and NR adjustments that you can skip. Well, so is the damn rewind button. It's quirky, but if you need a player at this stage of the game, you don't have many options. Only time will tell how durable it is.