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Sony Walkman WM-FX197
by anwar7
My 7 year old son loves listening to story tapes and we have a very large collection! I knew that cassettes are now a thing of the past, but I would hate to have to replace the collection! We do also have stories on C.D and play these when we are in the car. However for other times he has a Sony WM FX197 walkman. The walkman was given to ... him as a present a few years ago and is a well used item!
The Sony WM FX 197 comes in silver and looks quite stylish. It is not only a cassette player, but also has an AM/FM radio. This is quite a basic walkman, but is surprisingly robust. My son has dropped it on numerous occasions and it has come to no harm. It does have a belt clip, but this is something he rarely bothers with! The walkman has easy to use buttons with a play, stop, rewind and fast forward functions. The sound quality when listening to cassettes is not top notch, but it is more than adequate for his needs. I am pleased to report that there is a volume limiter, so he can't have the sound too loud and damage his ears!
The radio has an analogue tuner and is very easy to operate. My son doesn't listen to the radio often, but again it is more than adequate. I probably wouldn't have bought a walkman with a radio, but as this was a present I wasn't in a position to chose! The ear phones that came with this walkman were pretty basic, but they are still working. My son finds them comfortable to wear.
This walkman takes 2 AA batteries and the battery life is good. It can be difficult to find cassette players these days, but I see that Amazon have this model on sale for just under £40.Overall I would recommend this model, it is well made ,easy to use and has reasonable sound quality.
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Sony Walkman WM-EX194/S
by thedevilinme
I love my Walkman! Yes they are hard to find these days and my last one came direct from the factory in Japan as I was that desperate to get one but I swear by them. I know, tape cassettes went out with cords and Sodastreams but if it aint broke then why fix it. I doubt if you can buy a portable tape cassette player in England now, bar ... EBay. I love them because I hate CD's and always have and so never needed a portable CD player for my music on the move. I have never purchased a CD ever and Im proud! They were over-priced and about as stable as a soap opera actress after a good drink.
I was a good runner in my day and the idea of jogging with one of these on my hip was a huge no no, cumbersome big round things that jumped around more than a Lima on hot coals. To jog with music in your ears for the long Sunday run could only be achieved with a Walkman style cassette player, offering a damper system never equalled-anti-roll- especially if you get a good pace on. And with Van Halen in your ear it's an uplifting experience. Tapes were far more portable than CD players and to be honest the sound quality not that much different. MP3 digital has changed everything, of course, and I won't be buying another Walkman, but it was one of the last century's most iconic audio products for me. It needs respect. The fatal flaw of any tape player is that the tape loves snaring in the works and the machine enjoying chewing it up. When ever you saw those streams of discarded cassette tape blowing in the wind on the street you all know how it got there.
Just as we were ripped off by the cost of CD's we have been delighted with free online music, so no need for the Walkman anymore, even for me. MP3 players are no bigger than lighters and certainly don't jump around or chew up the songs like its predecessors did. But I still use my Walkman now and then because I refuse to throw away all my old mix tapes, some obscure soft rock there not even available on line. In fact it had an outing today just for some Richard Marx! If you can still buy one then here is the spec for the last Walkman you can buy on Amazon...
-Product Features-
Colour: Blue or silver or black
-Size-
Depth: 3.5 cm
Height: 11.2 cm
Product Type: Cassette player
Weight: 115 g
Width: 8.7 cm
Features:
Volume limiter
Sound Effects: Groove, Mega Bass
Sound Output Mode: Stereo
Battery: 2 x battery - AA type (up to 25 hour duration)
Battery status display.
Features: Full auto-stop
1 x headphones (mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm)
Sound Output Mode: Stereo
At around the size and thickness of Richard Branson's wallet I wouldn't say the Walkman shape was cumbersome but you knew you had it on you. After sliding the two AA batteries in like bullets into an assassins gun and slotting your selected tape in the back load slot like a magazine into an Uzi its off you go...be it jogging or everyday walkies on your lunch hour or play days. The supplied headphones are ok but we all know that they are rarely to our personal taste on portable music listening devices...not fitting in the ear properly or the sound too tinny. I like to have those small foam covers on them to give the songs more bass by getting the sound right into your ear but you just can't buy them anymore and few headphones supply them inclusive these days. HMV used to do 6 for 99p but they stopped and now the best deal you can get is 6 for £2.99 at Maplins, which is outrageous is you consider you are buying just 6 bits of foam that cost 12p to make a pack in China or somewhere. At the Walkman style players prime I would spend the right amount of money to get the right sound from the mini headphones. The cheap heads were dreadful. In fact you could buy Alba walkman style players for the same price as the cheapest headphones at £5.99!
It has a volume limiter half way down the cable so you don't have to keep dipping in your bag to turn it up or down and a belt clip for joggers. 'Mega Bass' and 'Grove' buttons fade out the tinny sound and you get some decent 'thump' and 'bang' to it if you like your urban music beats. The most pointless thing about Walkmans are those mysterious buttons on the side of the machine, when switched on and off just make the sound go right down for no real reason, one called 'AVLS' and the other 'Chrome Metal'. This one also has a useful anti-rolling mechanism for the joggers. It's fair to say portable DVD players don't have those. Walkmans great...portable DVD players crap...
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Alba CX570
by Siibillam-Law
I've had a few run ins with some cheap Alba products over the years, yet somehow I always seem to end up with one around. I'm pretty sure I don't buy them, but somehow they just appear in my house.
The CX570 is a decently priced portable radio and CD player which, when it first comes out of the box, does exactly what you want ... it to. The sound quality isn't the best, but it's actually pretty decent, considering the speakers the sound is coming from. The CD player played CDs fine without any problems and the radio worked as well as I expected.
Then, after a while, things began to go wrong with it, like they seem to do when it comes to Alba products. After a while, the CD player laser started to weaken and CDs began to play jerkily and eventually stopped. It would only play properly if I pressed down hard on the disc area.
Not only that, but few buttons began to come loose as well, meaning they would either fall off or have to pressed quite hard to work properly. I don't know, maybe it was just my unit but the thing is I seem to have similar problems with pretty much every Alba product I own.
So while I wouldn't discourage you from getting this, I mean it's not exactly expensive or anything, be warned that, like with a lot of products from this brand, it's not going to be of the highest quality. However, if it does work, and it does (at least for a while), you can't argue with the sound quality.
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