BlumWay Portable Cassette Recorder Player, Audio Music Cassette Tape to Digital Converter Player with Earphone, No Need Computer

It does what it says, BUT, there are too many problems with the unit, might as well do it the old way, you will have better results. The rewind is fast forward button, the fast forward is rewind button, you will have a hum / interference in your recordings. Automatic kinda works, but it will just keep playing each side until you stop it. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. I had high hopes for this!

The manual needs to have all the controls shown at the beginning, so that a person can quickly and easily copy a cassete tape to mp3 on a USB; the digital controls are not shown at the beginning with the analogue ones: otherwise I would not have wasted twenty minutes without any results. All the extra colorful artwork is a major distraction that conceals the small digital controls on the other side. The manual claims to have an automatic and manual mode, but I never found that. Please look at pictures on pages one through seven before you do anything, so you can understand how this device really works. This powerful and helpful device is not intuitive. I downloaded descript so that I could create a transcript from audio on an old cassette.

What a great tool! If you're like me, you may have tons of cassette tapes (remember them?) and if you are to transfer them to another device, you need other equipment to do it and sometimes they are just to big to be useful anywhere b'cept at home and often times you need more than one device to accomplish the goal of transference. Even some of the latter model cars don't have CD players in them but rather USB ports. Yup, even CD's are becoming a thing of the past. This is a tape cassette player complete with everything you may need for listening to old tape cassettes using battery power, plug in power, computer power. You can transfer cassette tapes to the computer OR just a thumb drive. Unlike some other devices out there that REQUIRE the use of a computer, this one does provides the option. I stuck a 128GB thumb drive in this thing and it worked. Some are limited to 32GB is why that's important. Now I can listen to my own choice of music in my car. I have a CD/Blue Ray DVD player slot in the console and changing CD's was a nuisance whether driving or stationery. Now I can just plug my thumb drive in the USB port and listen for hours. If you like just listening to cassettes on this (earplugs are even provided) you might invest in a tape cassette head cleaner.. Easy recording features a manual and automatic setting with the pressing on the pad of this device. You can even set the volume of the recorded piece. Plays one side only or continuous on both sides of the cassette. I just got this so I have no idea of longevity or craftmanship but this thing is surprisingly weighty for its size if that means anything. So far, as far as I'm concerned, WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT IT!12 30 2020 Ok, I found what not to like about it. Maybe I got a bad one (it happens even with the best of products, right?) I had to return it as while it did play cassettes though maybe not the best of sound quality (but what would you expect $25) it didn't perform the feature for which it was intended which was convert the tape cassette onto the flash drive. I did purchase the drive that was advertised with this unit. It converted 1 1/2 songs and stopped recording onto the flash drive. Of course there is no way to tell whether or not it is, in fact recording until you review what you think you've recorded. I tried again with the unit plugged in to a power source (USB) and this time, nothing was converted. I tried another better quality flash drive. Nothing ended up on the SanDisk. I used both the manual and auto modes of recording and each time ended up with nothing on the drives. I tried recording just one side of the tape cassette and then just one song with both flash drives. Nothing. I quick formatted each drive and tried it again. Nothing. I then went the extreme and did a complete formatting both drives (took longer to format) and tried a final time with each. Nothing. BTW the directions are well written and easy to follow and I'm good at following directions. Yeah, I'm a man and I read the instructions. Sue me! Not a bad idea for converting tapes but now I know WHAT NOT TO LIKE ABOUT IT! Sorry BlumWay. This idea needs considerable reengineering, in my opinion.

I don't understand how in 2024 we can have cassette players that are lower quality than the cassette players from the 1990's.I understand the sound quality is going to be rough but the aux port doesn't work properly. I can't plug the cable in all the way or no sound comes out. I have to find the sweet spot so I can get sound out for 2 speakers. Otherwise It's not sound or just 1 speaker.The play button doesn't do anything half the time. The motor seems under powered to spin the cassette and I'm not even using batteries.Waste of money. Will return.

DO THIS IF YOU WANT A GOOD SOUNDING RECORDING!!This 2 minute read will save you HOURS OF TIME....I wish some one wrote this before I started on this project. I bought this due to the positive reviews and that it is made by Jensen and they are supposed to be an audio company right...car stereos anyone. Anyway, I have about 30 cassette tapes from the 1990s that have interviews, my kids talking and playing guitar with friends. I used a $50 boom box with the worlds worst mic(built in to the boombox) for some of the recordings so I did not have the best equipment at the time and did not realize that I would be messing with these 30 years later. I am a computer graphics person, musician and a semipro photographer...so I use computers and software a lot. I baught this recoder and was not happy with it for what I wanted to do with my cassettes. It was hard to use and would not record to the usb after 2 tapes... so sent it back. Do not waste your time with it if you value your cassettes. The Jensen is about $8 more, solidly built and will last. SO buy it as it is easy to operate and you can see the tape moving...big buttons...and it just works like it is supposed to. Even your grandmother can use it. It is the best alternative for doing this project...I spent HOURS trying to find the best option and even considered buying a $200 cassette deck of ebay, but I did not want the cost and the hassle of setting up a big unit that I would not use again once the tapes were recorded.I used the Jensen with a VTOP USB2.0 Analog Audio Capture Card Device Compatible for Windows (price $19). Works much better than the headphone jack. This plugs in to my windows laptop and makes it easy. You can use the headphone jack but this picks up a lot of random noise. The recorder takes 4 C batteries and also comes with a AC power plug. So here is the IMPORTANT part...If you use the power plug(wall outlet) you will get very loud humming/buzzing or electrical interference when you try to listen/record through the computer. So loud it will ruin your recordings. I tried multiple plugs and computers in my house and all had the hum(it is a grounding issue with the recorder itself and it picks up electrical interference which will end up in your recording) It will not do this if you use the batteries and the recording sounds fine. I have a lot of tapes and did not want to mess with buying C batteries or getting a rechargeable kit of batteries($25more). The solution and the answer is this problem is a noise isolator..."Smof Ground Loop Noise Isolator for Car Audio/Home Stereo System (Eliminate The Buzzing Noise Completely) with 3.5mm Audio Cable, Black Ground Loop Noise Isolator for Car Audio/Home Stereo System"The cost is $10 and it removed ALL of the electrical noise and the recording is as good as the tape! If you do not use one of these you will be frustrated and sorry that you are trying to record all those tapes with poor sound quality...the buzzing is so loud that you can not listen to the recording. Any noise isolator will work and a $30 one is not any better than a $10 one as they all do the same thing.So for about $50 I have a good system to digitize my tapes. NO it is twice as much as the cheap China usb recorder, but I know that the time spent recording will not be wasted and the recordings will be as good as the tape....and you will SAVE TIME in the end. I use adobe audacity to capture the recordings as I have a subscription for my work, but most any program will work. A good FREE software is audacity sound software.(audacityteam.org). It is pretty basic and easy to use. When I put a tape in the Jensen to record, I set a timer on the software for the length of the tape, usually 46 minutes for my 90 min tapes, so the recording will auto stop when the tape is over. That way I just load a tape and hit record and it stops recording when the timer is up(I put one in and go to bed). It keeps you from making hours long recordings that you have to edit later....no timer and you have to turn off the record button or sit by the Jensen to stop it(again a time issue if you have lots of tapes). Audicity also has a timer mode and a quick google search will tell you how to set it.** Also save your recordings as wav files for the original and make a mp3 copy of the file to share.**Also, do a 1minute test recording before you start to record the entire tape so you can set the volume on the Jensen correctly as it acts as the gain for the recording. Failure to do this can result in a recording to low or too high and both will sound bad***So if your cassette tapes are important to you, do it right the first time and spend a few $$.