Gracioso Portable Cassette Player Recorder Converter,Cassette to MP3 via SD Card,Tape Player with 1000mah Rechargeable Battery,Built-in Microphone&Speaker,Headphone Jack,16GB SD Card

This is an updated review.After I wrote my unfortunate experience with this Gracioso Player, the seller promptly contacted me, and sent me a replacement machine. Customer service = 100%! I decided to wait a bit before updating my review, as I wanted to ensure that my first experience wasn’t repeated.I write this update as I’m listening to an 90s tape. I haven’t had the experience I had with the first tape player, and I’m confident to say that it seems that with the first player, I received an outlier product that was slightly defective. (Actually, I opened it up (not too easily) and discovered that the problem was just that one of the rubber bands was a tad loose to move a rotating wheel.)What I love about this Gracioso player:1. The sound is clear and loud enough for regular listening, even without using the earphones2. It uses the universal and easy to get USB C charger3. It keeps charge for a long time4. It’s just so convenient to record from tape to the microSD. I don’t have to use audio apps to have playable music on the go.5. The micro SD comes slotted into a USB flash disk (and it’s removable) meaning that you can record and easily play with any player compatible with a USB flash disk or micro SD6. The price is definitely worth it7. A clear digital display with a counter8. It’s easily portable: the size, and the fact that it carries chargeWhat I wish (future improvements?):1. That there was a see-through display showing the tape playing (that’s how we used to see them in the 80s and 90s!)2. That it had Bluetooth connectivity to speakers3. A variety of colours: I wish I had a choice not to buy the white4. That it had direct USB flash disk recording5. When it’s on but without the Play button pressed, it automatically plays the plugged in microSD card: I wish there was a toggle for that.All in all, this is a great Gracioso player worth buying!Previous review:Aaaargh, this product is so annoying!It worked for exactly one week, playing for about 15 hours in total, and then died out!From the look of things, it's probably the wheels that pull the tape that have stopped rotating. Not only has this caused the device to stop working, but the device has spoilt several of my 30 year old tapes as i tried to play them: the tapes have been "chewed"! And who repairs these things anymore?? So, i'm left with no functional tape player, damaged tapes, and money gone.Yet the device had so much promise, with good sound recording, and portability. I just wish it was more durable.

This recorder/converter works very well. If I could give it 10 stars, I would. It is very simple to convert a cassette to MP3. And once that is completed, (if you want) you can take the SD card out of the converter, use the USB adapter that is supplied, put the SD card in it, plug it into your computer, and copy the files to your computer (as a form of backup in case something happens to the SD card). And, if you don’t want the music file that is on the converter when you receive it, simply delete it from the SD card while you have the SD card in the computer.The cassette tapes that I converted to MP3 were purchased in the late 80s, and the music on them was no longer available in any other form. So this converter allows me to continue listening to the music on the tapes (via MP3 files on the SD card) without fear of the tapes breaking.I also converted several CDs to the MP3 format by using Windows Media Player. Then I copied these files onto the SD card. Once the SD card was back in the converter, I could listen to the music on the CDs via the converter.Even though the name of the song or tape does not show up in the converter’s window, the converted cassette tape or song number does, and that allows me to forward to the number of the tape or song that I want to listen to.The converter’s fairly long play life means I don’t have to recharge it as often. Also, I can listen to the music while the converter is being charged. And I like being able to listen to the music with or without headsets as there is a built-in speaker.The 16 GB SD card has plenty of space for all the music that I would want to put on it.Hopefully this product will last a long time.Disadvantages besides the song name not showing in the converter’s window:The chargeable battery is built in, so it cannot be taken out and replaced if it goes bad.The manual, while helpful, needs to be edited by a person who has English as their first language.

First off, the player works great for intended use of many. You can play cassettes, you can record them simply to MP3 with a built-in function and you can edit those files down.Two things to improve the device.BLUETOOTH capabilities. If you could connect to a soundbar or speaker wirelessly, since it’s now 2023 after all, the cassette playing function would be a huge benefit to owning this.I went through the whole record process, which was the whole reason I was drawn to this machine in the first place. I have so many demo tapes of bands that haven’t made it to the digital age and I haven’t had a functional tape player for years to listen to any of them. I’ve been hoping for a new dual deck component manufacturer to come along and save me from my dilemma, but so far they’ve been all questionable build quality and not worth the investment.MP3 ENCODING SETTINGS! I finally got my laptop ready for the USB process and tracked down an old desktop program to check the MP3 quality of these files, since I still had no idea how I was going to split MP3 files into individual tracks. The device manual has no mention of encoding settings, so I expected something decent, but EncSpot showed a sloppy encoding job and only 160kbps, which meant all the recordings are going to be a 1990s level of ‘bad MP3 encoding’ waste of time unfortunately.Ideally, it would be nice to record to .WAV and you choose the encoding process from raw files, but I guess I just need to hook up the player to my laptop now and go old school line-in recording with Sound Forge or whatever modern audio recording program is on the market these days.If a new version of the device with MP3 encoding options and BLUETOOTH connectivity ability came out, I’d definitely take the plunge since the tape playing function is sound enough compared to any old Walkman variety. For $35, this player is still workable enough for the general cassette enthusiast looking to digitize their collections.