I wrote about how I got into cassettes quite some time while ago. My biggest suggestion for buying your own cassette player was to find one from a bygone era. Buy one from the mid to late 90’s or very early 2000s, when cassette technology was at its peak. Now, so few cassette manufacturers are left that all modern cassette players use the same transfer mechanism. That’s why they all have generally the same features, size, shape, and button placement. They’re basically the same under the hood. However, sound quality, adjustment, additional features, shape, and looks differentiate them.
I bought two of the high-end current cassette player models. The first was Fiio’s CP13, and shortly thereafter, We Are Rewind’s cassette player. I quickly got a favorite model. I thought it would be the Fiio. After all, it’s smaller and in tests I heard online, seemed to have a slightly fuller, more bass-heavy sound. However, in person, I quickly realized that the sound difference between the two players was negligible. On top of that, the We Are Rewind player came with a host of additional features that left me disappointed in the Fiio. But here’s what I like about each player, and how they stack up against each other in detail. Maybe it’ll help you enter the world of cassettes?
In This Article:
Fiio CP13
The Fiio CP 13 is the smaller of the two players, but it’s not something anyone would call “compact.” Even my Walkman cassette players from the 80s are smaller than it. That’s because every modern cassette player is using the same tape transfer mechanism. There’s only so small they can make these using third party parts. If they wanted to invest heavily in developing new transfer mechanisms, they could, and eventually make something more like any generic Walkman from the 90s, but, unfortunately, that would be extremely expensive and, also unfortunately, cassettes are still a niche market. Physical media can’t make a comeback fast enough though! The streaming age needs to die.
Sound Quality
I was legitimately shocked by this, but the sound quality isn’t bad. Does it compare to my Walkman DD30? No. It doesn’t even match my more mid-range Walkman WM-EX660. However, it doesn’t sound bad. I expected it to sound like cheap, even toy cassette players from my youth. I thought it would be a novelty, a poor reflection of what cassettes are capable of. Instead, it was enjoyable to listen to. My mid-range Walkman from the 90’s may outperform it, especially as it can boost bass and play Type II and IV tapes properly, but without the bass boosting, it’s only slightly better than the Fiio. There’s detail in these cassettes that the Fiio can access in ways I thought would be impossible for a modern cassette player.
That’s not to say it’s perfect. The Fiio CP13 can only handle type 1 tapes without Dolby Noise Reduction and performs no equalization to improve the tone. To non-tapeheads, that means type 2 and type 4 (usually stylized as II and IV), will sound high pitched, tinny, even. Without Dolby Noise Reduction, which was standard in most cassette players, tapes that do have it will have a hissing sound at the high end, and won’t sound as good as they should. It also means you can’t cancel out the slight hiss from tapes. I keep Dolby Noise Reduction off unless a tape already has it on, as it does tend to compress the sound a little. Finally, there’s the issue of equalization. Without a bass boosting feature, tapes have a dull sound. The bass boost in Sony Walkmans was fantastic, and also accentuated the high end slightly, to ensure it never felt as though the bass was overwhelming, unless you wanted it to be. Without any of this, tapes will always sound a bit flat on the Fiio, and may have a bit of a hiss to them.
Anti-Roll
Then there’s the issue of “rolling.” That is, movement of the device can change the sound output. And the Fiio’s got it worse than any other cassette player I’ve ever tested. The sound quality will change depending on whether or not the device is sitting flat on its back or on another side. If you’re walking around, the sound will cut out frequently and may come back sounding muted as the components and tape can move around enough to go out of alignment.
The Fiio has issues with rolling worse than any cassette player I’ve ever used, even bargain ones I had as a kid. And, yes, it’s worse than the We Are Rewind player. Because of this, I can’t recommend the Fiio for listening on the go. Despite being larger, the We Are Rewind is much better if you’re walking to put it in a bag. Not that it’s perfect either. I thought I could use the Fiio as a backup device for listening to tapes on the go if I ever had to service my Walkman, but whether it’s in a bag or pocket, it’s frustratingly useless while on a walk.
Speed Accuracy/Wow & Flutter
The Fiio doesn’t have an easy way to adjust playback speed, but the accuracy out of the box was not too bad. It is consistently faster than all my other players, by a decent margin, but you likely wouldn’t notice it enough to want to disassemble the cassette player to fix it. I tested by playing a steady tone of 3000MHz on the tape. If it’s perfect, the playback would be a consistent 3000MHz, because if it’s playing faster, it’ll be higher pitched, and slower is lower pitched. The Fiio came in at 3050MHz. That might not sound too fast until you realize even my “mid-range” and portability-focused Walkman WM-EX660 from 1997 was able to get a more consistent 3010MHz. And none of them hold a candle to the Walkman DD30, my favorite portable player, which was 3007MHz, with almost no variation. Even the We Are Rewind came in with 3018MHz.
Wow and Flutter was better on my Fiio than my WM-EX660 though. That came in around 0.35. A lower number is better here. For example, my Walkman DD30, which has a direct drive instead of a rubber band driving it, came in at 0.14. The We Are Rewind once again performed better, with 0.25 as its median.
I also had to adjust the azimuth of the head on the Fiio. Out of the box, it sounded muted, as the head was misaligned. It was easy to fix well enough, but to do this properly, you need more equipment than I have access to. This should be a setting one rarely—if ever—has to touch on their cassette player, and I haven’t had to do it for any of my other ones. While it is easy to just take a screwdriver in there and adjust it while playing back some music, it shouldn’t be necessary.
Actual playback may sound “fuller” on the Fiio now, but the variation makes it the worst of my players.
Build Quality/Design
The Fiio’s enclosure is made of a matte textured aluminum. It feels high-end. The buttons feel satisfying and chunky to press, and the hinge has a firm snap to it when opening and closing. However, I can feel something moving inside when turning it around. Like the movement itself isn’t secured. I noticed this on the We Are Rewind as well. It’s the problem with building a high-end device around a cheap part, the third-party cassette mechanism itself. However, between the buttons and large volume knob, the Fiio feels just a little more premium than the We Are Rewind player. I also appreciate the larger cassette window.
Battery Life
The battery on my Walkman is essentially a single AA battery. It’s flat and thin, a so-called “gumstick” battery. It easily gives me 8 hours of playback, and as much as 15 when using the extended battery pack. Meanwhile, the Fiio has a lithium ion battery that seems to hold a lot more juice. Fiio claims 13 hours of battery life, without needing an external battery pack. That’s believable. I had it work for me over days of listening, needing to charge it rarely. And when you do? You can just use a standard USB-C charger.
I’ll admit, I get a bit nervous when I don’t know how much power I have left in a gumstick battery, and will carry a spare in a battery pack when going out sometimes. But the Fiio can be charged by the same battery pack I carry for my iPhone, as long as I remember a USB-C cable.
Other Features
The Fiio doesn’t have many other features. They did replace the a flywheel with a copper one to give it more momentum and density over plastic, and they say they select only the best heads from the factory. But other than that, it’s little more than a nice modern cassette player. Rewind and fast forward are quiet, albeit slow.
The Fiio would be a decent modern cassette player, but it has shortcomings that makes it pale in comparison to players from a few decades ago. It also doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There’s another high–end modern cassette player on the market, and it might be the better choice for most people.
We Are Rewind Cassette Player
I initially thought the WAR cassette player would be a waste of my time. After all, I had read that the sound quality is better on the Fiio (an extremely small difference, but, sure, a little), it’s more compact, and I didn’t even have the need for Bluetooth, which appeared to add to the bulk. The WAR cassette player is considerably larger than the Fiio. They’re the same thickness, because, again, they’re using the same tape transport mechanism, but it’s about three centimeters wider. Plus, I could get the Fiio in a bright red color, and I love red.
But I decided to try it anyway after giving the Fiio a try and finding a few notable shortcomings. I wanted to see if the WAR would be a better cassette player to recommend to others. What I found was a more complicated answer than a simple “pick the Fiio or pick the We Are Rewind,” but I did end up keeping both.
Sound Quality
The bass response might be very slightly better in the Fiio. Honestly, unless you’re listening to them back-to-back, you’re not going to notice a difference in sound quality between these two devices. Swapping out headphones makes a much larger difference. The WAR cassette player will have just a little less bass and perhaps a little more of the higher end, allowing more hiss through.
Just like the Fiio, however, it has the same issue with bass. Neither of these will pump out bass. Without any bass boosting, it can sound flat. You’ll want headphones that can make up for this, but still might find the sound lacking. Furthermore, just like the Fiio, there’s no real support for Type II or IV cassettes. You can play them, they’ll play just fine, but because they’re not correcting for the increased output, they’ll sound high pitched and noisy. Even cassette players in the 80s had this, and Sony’s second Walkman ever could do it! When it comes to new cassette players, this might be the best we can get, but it does leave a lot to be desired. It’s not bad, it’s just not that good.
Anti-Roll
The Fiio might have a slightly better sound quality, but if you’re taking your cassettes on a walk, the Fiio’s small size won’t make it any better than the We Are Rewind. That’s because the WAR cassette player is much less prone to skipping playback while you move it around. Also, unlike the Fiio, turning it upside down won’t make it sound drastically different. It’s a far more consistent sound. So, while on a desk the Fiio might sound slightly better, the We Are Rewind cassette player sounds much better on a walk. I have a hip sling bag that fits it perfectly alongside my other normal stuff, so carrying it around isn’t bad, despite its larger size.
Speed Accuracy/Wow & Flutter
I mentioned the values in the Fiio section, but the speed variation for the WAR player was closer to that from my vintage players, coming in at 3018MHz vs the 3007MHz and 3010MHz from my DD30 and WM-EX660, respectively. It’s much better than the Fiio’s 3050MHz. Wow and flutter is also lower on the We Are Rewind player, and moving the device doesn’t change the playback as much as it does on the Fiio. I did notice that it plays slightly slower face down than face up, but nothing like the sound dropping out that you experience on the Fiio.
The We Are Rewind has better Wow and Flutter than my old band-driven Walkman, which is to be expected. That Walkman is made for portability and is also nearly 30 years old. However, speed accuracy is still better on the older models. The fact that the We Are Rewind was adjustable to within a range, however, does make it considerably better than the Fiio.
Build Quality/Design
Like the Fiio, the We Are Rewind is made of aluminum and has a hefty, premium feel. The buttons have a satisfying physical notchiness to it. I do prefer the buttons on the Fiio for their shape and feel, but overall, it feels like a high-end device. It also is higher quality than the Fiio, as the sound reproduction is better, more accurate, and less prone to changing depending on how it’s sitting on your desk. This feels like a high-end player, even if, compared to high end players from decades ago, it doesn’t measure up.
The design itself is great. The two tone options look cool. I might say that I prefer the tactility of the Fiio, in the volume knob and larger buttons, but design-wise, they’re both great looking devices and it’ll be a matter of preference. The We Are Rewind does seem to have more color options, when they’re actually in stock. As of this writing, all models are “pre-orders,” though they should ship this month.
Battery Life
Just like the Fiio, the We Are Rewind player lacks a decent battery life indicator, so it’s hard to tell how much of a charge it has unless you’ve been keeping track of it. Still, it lasts at least 12 hours, according to the company’s website. I often got as much as 15 hours from both the WAR player and the Fiio. It’s unlikely you’ll need to charge daily unless you’re listening during nearly every waking hour of your life, but charging every few days is to be expected. Just make sure you charge it before a long trip, or bring a USB-C battery pack to give it a recharge on the go.
Recording
This is going to sound ridiculous, given the history of recording music on physical mediums, but it was so cool to be able to plug my amp’s output directly into a cassette player, hit record, and put my music on a track on a cassette player. Now, it didn’t sound great. There was plenty of hiss, the range didn’t feel fully supported, it was in mono sound on one side because my guitar is a mono instrument, but I was shocked at just how well it did. So I decided to record the output of some songs. A simple 3.5mm cord could do this. Take the output from one device, hit record, and record it on the tape. If you had a cassette player with a record function, this was a much better way to make a mix tape than holding it close to the speaker while the radio played… I assume. What? Can’t blame me for growing up in the “burn a CD” era!
I recorded some of my friend’s band’s music onto a cassette using the We Are Rewind player’s line in, and it sounded… surprisingly passing. It was peaky, there’s no way to check levels, and let’s not forget that playback already isn’t an accurate speed on this so recording won’t sound great either. You can’t even listen while you record, so you have no idea how it sounded until you’re done recording. I wouldn’t do my own mix tapes with this as I have a far more reliable cassette deck for that. But in a pinch? Making a mix tape for your partner? It’s passable! Certainly better than live recording music with your phone.
If you had a good enough microphone for a line in, you could record concerts to make your own live copies for later with this. Or, do like I did, play your own music into it and enjoy hearing your own music coming off a magnetic medium. There’s something so cool to realizing you put your own music into physical space like that.
Overall, the recording capabilities on this would be better suited for voice memos than music. It’s not great, but in a pinch, or if you just want a peaky recording that doesn’t need detail as much as feeling, then sure, you could record with this. Your partner or friend would love it. The recording just isn’t as good as you can do with a better deck and isn’t good enough for, say, selling your music. However, it’s better than literally every other portable cassette player I own, as it’s the only one that actually can record music. And, frankly, I’ve bought cassettes from merch tables that sounded almost as bad as this in parts. Maybe they used a WAR cassette player to record those?
Bluetooth and Other Features
This cassette player has Bluetooth. This cassette player has Bluetooth. What? I was able to play a cassette in one room and, in another, be listening on everything from my AirPods Max to a Marshall Bluetooth speaker. I’m doing my makeup in the bathroom paying on a Bluetooth speaker while a cassette player emits the music from another room. You could put your We Are Rewind cassette player in your bag and use your fully wireless headphones on a train. This just feels kind of wrong, even more than playing my records over Bluetooth with an adapter. And yet, it’s such a cool feeling. I didn’t anticipate built-in Bluetooth being such a cool feature, after all, I mostly listen with wired headphones and have a Bluetooth adapter anyway. But it definitely gives it a leg up over the Fiio. This is a cool feature. Bring the WAR and a Bluetooth speaker to hang out with friends and you have a makeshift boombox for your mix tapes.
Besides that, the We Are Rewind is also my only cassette player with an easily adjustable speed screw on the back. This isn’t just useful for dialing in the right speed, it also has another use that you could probably guess if you listen to podcasts or long form videos. You can speed up what you’re listening to. It won’t be pitch corrected like a 3 hour long video essay will on YouTube, but it’ll be faster, and can help you listen to anything from books on tape to voice notes more quickly.
Fiio vs We Are Rewind: Direct Comparison
Between these two new players, if I could only have one, it would be the We Are Rewind, hands down. I don’t even know why I’d pick the Fiio over it. Yes, there is a slightly fuller aspect to the Fiio’s sound. However, there’s also far more variation that sound, and it’s practically unusable in a bag. On top of that, the We Are Rewind player can also do recording and Bluetooth.
They both sound pretty good. Good enough, anyway, and better than I expected. They both have decent battery life. I could see picking either one for yourself or as a gift. But if you’re going to pick just one new player with a wide range of features and, despite its larger size, better portability, then I think the We Are Rewind player is the clear winner.
What Cassette Player Should You Buy in 2026?
The question of what cassette player you buy in 2026, however, is a bit more complicated. The Fiio might be cheaper than you could find some vintage Walkman cassette players. However, the We Are Rewind gets closer to the prices you’d find with quality vintage players. But which should you choose?
Personally, I’d pick the vintage player. They may take more research to get though. You’ll want to search for repaired/serviced models on eBay, find a model that looks good, research it to make sure it has features you want like bass boosting, anti-roll, Dolby Noise Reduction, and even decent battery life, such as that you can get with a player that accepts both gumstick batteries and battery packs. My recommendation is to start by searching “Sony Walkman WM-EX serviced” in eBay. Find a reliable seller and cross-reference any model you find with WalkmanLand to make sure it has the features you most want, although pretty much any of the “EX” models will fit your basic needs.
I’ve definitely had a few duds. Players that arrived unable to rewind, others that had a faulty power supply, and at some point, I’m going to set aside time to repair some of my old players. It’s definitely more involved. But the quality of what you’re listening to is worth it for me. The ability to reduce noise, get the right type tape recognized by the player, or boost the bass is worth it to me. I wish modern players had any of the comfort features that we had decades ago.
However, if you’re just getting into cassettes and don’t want to have to do hours of research for your decision making, then grab a We Are Rewind or Fiio cassette player. They’re not bad, and they are certainly a good entry point for a future cassette enthusiast. If I wanted a partner to get into cassettes, I might buy them a vintage one and service it myself. But for a quick gift for a partner or friend, I would have no issues grabbing a We Are Rewind player for them. While the vintage players are definitely better, only you can decide if the research is worth the improved listening experience and portability. As for me, I’ll stick with my pocket-sized players with Megabass, thanks.