Cassettes do have a warm and distinctive sound, though—once you have a taste for light hiss, you may find yourself missing it in cleaner formats. The unique difficulty of skipping songs gives the album format a primacy no other medium can—you may find yourself learning to like songs you’d have skipped. (While writing this review I realized Liz Phair’s “Crater Lake” is an absolute banger.)
For the collector, cassettes are still relatively cheap and affordable in an era when you see a vinyl copy of Billy Joel’s extremely meh 1980 album Glass Houses marked at $25. Also, they look cool and feel nice in your hand. In short, collecting cassettes makes sense because they’re readily available and only the 1% can feasibly collect MiniDiscs.
Being Kind to Rewind
The Rewind has a very sturdy aluminum case and a built-in battery that recharges with USB-C. It weighs 14 ounces, just a little less than two iPhone 15 Pro Maxes. In addition to the headphone audio out, there is a 3.5mm audio in so you can record your tapes—you may find it fun to surprise that special someone with a homemade mix tape.
Photograph: Martin Cizmar
I’ve owned a half-dozen cassette players since falling into the hobby because I bought an old Suburu with a broken CD player that ate my copy of Desire. The Rewind is far and away the best—I like it so much that I still use it to listen to my tapes while driving even though I sold that Suburau and now have a stereo with CarPlay.
Anyone who’s ever had to re-spool a hundred feet of tangled tape, praying there’s not a tear, understands how important it is to have a reliable transport. The Rewind has never eaten a tape, unlike half of my other players. There are some great vintage players out there, but unless they’ve been completely cleaned and refurbished you run the risk of one weak component causing cascading failures. A high-end refurbished player will cost at least as much as the Rewind and you won’t get any of the added modern features.
The rewind sounds as good as any portable player I’ve heard, which is to say it reliably reproduces the sound of the cassette, pops and hisses included. That’s even true when you use the Bluetooth function to broadcast your tapes to wireless headphones. I’m one of those people who doesn’t understand the appeal of streaming a physical medium—if I wanted to hear a digital version I’d just play it on Apple Music—but it’s nice to have the option here. I was able to easily pair the Rewind with a set of JBL Tune headphones, but I wasn’t able to get it to work with my car stereo, instead relying on a 3.5mm cable. The audio is muted using Bluetooth compared to wired headphones.
A Little Hiss
The only issue is the lack of auto-stop when the cassette has run out of string rewinding or fast-forwarding. The poor little motor continues to whir away with an unpleasant squeal that also means the tape inside may be stressed. The player doesn’t ship with headphones. I paired it with an inexpensive set of clear Koss headphones, but I was also sent Rewind’s Bluetooth headphones which I was very unimpressed with—the vintage look is cool, but they have a flimsy feel and flimsier sound for $50.
Those are all relatively minor gripes, though, considering everything the Rewind does better than anyone else right now. This French cassette player is the best in 2025, and depending on the collecting trends, that may end up making it the last best tape player there is.
