If Dieter Rams had designed the Walkman, it might have looked like the retro portable cassette player by We Are Rewind.
Of course, he might have designed something very different (probably in white rather than in one of the colours here), but you get the point. This is old-school modernist design, with a ‘less is more’ approach. And, of course, it’s a cassette player.
I’ve said this before, but cassettes have gone under the radar a bit. Yes, the vinyl revival is in full swing (and I suspect a CD revival will come around eventually), but there’s also a cassette revival. The value of secondhand cassettes is on the rise, some hip bands are releasing albums on cassette and as you can see here, companies are making hardware to play them once more.
The purists might point me to some obscure old Sony design for vast amounts on eBay, but I really like this design. And it does something that older models don’t do. It acknowledges the modern era.
There are three colours to choose from, each with a name (Serge, Keith and Kurt), and each one does what you expect of a cassette player. Playback, fast forward/rewind buttons, a headphone output, a volume control and an audio input to create your own mixtapes. I love the angular look, and I love the chunky buttons too.
But it’s not all about nostalgia and good looks. However, that’s likely to be a huge selling point. This one also makes concessions to the 21st century. Specifically, the old batteries have been replaced with a rechargeable lithium battery that provides up to 12 hours of continuous playback. That makes sense.
Also, the maker has added a built-in Bluetooth 5.1 connection, so you can connect the player to your headphones or wireless speaker in seconds. Apparently, that’s a world first. The maker also claims that its engineers have ‘worked hard’ to optimise the mechanism to be as close as possible to the best of the time.
It’s a very desirable thing, but it does’t come cheap, Saying that, it doesn’t break the bank either. £133 gets you one in whatever colour appeals. See the website for more technical details, to buy and to buy spare tapes too.
