This product isn't good

Author's Rating:

Pros: Low cost, digital tuner, TV and Weather bands, lots of tuner presets.

Cons: Tape play-back is nearly useless for music.

The Bottom Line: 
I would look someplace else. Aiwa use to make good portables. I was happy with my old Teac.

Author's Review
I bought this Walkman to listen to 'books on tape' and some music. I still have a reasonable collection of higher quality (Metal and Chromium-Dioxide) tapes made from CDs. The fault that makes this tape player such an awful (read useless) product is that the tape itself is able to 'wander' across the playback head. The music goes from having highs to missing highs and from stereo to mono. If I pull the door slightly open while playing back a tape, I can usually get good sound out of it. I think that this is either causing the tape to drop into the guides or it causing enough friction to occur in the source spool to draw the tape taught across the playback head.

It actually does okay with the mono, low-fi books on tape.

I'm using a different set of headphones (enclosed Koss headphones) than what came with the Walkman, so I cannot really comment on its out of the box sound quality in terms of accurate reproduction of sound.

Overall, I would not recommend this particular Walkman. I have been happy with most of the Sony stuff I have purchased (A TV, Home CD player, Receiver, DVD player, VHS VTR). The quality is usually there. I would look at other brands in their Walkmans however. In the early to mid 1990's I had a higher end Sony Tape Walkman and I was very happy with the quality. I assume to compete with the discount brands, they had to cheapen the design and construction of their entry level portables.