Arrela Portable Ezcap USB Portable Cassette to MP3 Converter Tape-to-MP3 Player Through USB Flash Disk with Headphones

First impression is good; if anything changes I'll come back and update.I took out some old tapes from music lessons 20 years ago, of my teacher laying down tunes for me to learn, that I wanted to recover, stuck one into the machine, popped on a flash drive, and puzzled over the directions till I figured out to press play and then the record button. Basically went off and left it, came back later and turned it off. I had files with long stretches of silence at the end but that was easy enough to snip off in Audacity which is free. Quickly listened to the beginning of one and it sounded good - as good as the original for sure. I can go back via Audacity at my leisure and either snip it into individual tunes, or just create an index so I know where to skip to if I want a particular item.One thing I did to be sure I had as few problems as possible: I put the tapes into my cassette deck in my stereo system and fast-forwarded them all the way through and then rewound them back. That way if there were any sticky spots they'd be cleared up before putting them into the cheaper mechanism here. I don't know if it helped but I am doing fine with this so far. It's not like any of my cassettes were CD quality in the first place so this seems to be a good solution to retrieve some of these irreplaceable recordings. It's not heavy duty so who knows how long it will last, I may have to buy another one before I make it through my huge piles of cassettes, but I plan to treat it gently.

If you're old enough to remember Sony Walkman cassette players this device is very similar in quality, size and operation. It has the added feature of being able to record to a thumb drive. Treat it carefully and it will hold up. As others have reported, the broken English that the instructions are written in make understanding them a bit of a challenge but after a couple of readings they begin to make sense. Expect to experience a period of trial-and-error time playing with the controls and recording before you're comfortable. I also suggest reading the Q&A's for tips on how to make it do what you expect it to. I'm recording many of my old cassettes (approx. 75) so haven't used the battery power option yet. Nor have I tried using the playback from the thumb drive yet (this is not a feature I would probably use anyway). I've hooked up the device to external speakers using the headphone jack so I can monitor what's being recorded. The device has "hung up" a couple of times after moving my thumb drive back and forth to my computer, never while recording. To un-hang it I simply unplug and replug the USB cable. I think this is because I forgot to turn off the recording before unplugging the thumb drive. I started out by using the Auto recording mode to separate tracks but discovered it didn't always do that correctly. I then used the Manual mode, which copies all songs into one track, and then use Audacity (free download) to label and separate the tracks correctly. I them import them into iTunes on my computer. Next I plan to try recording from the device using the USB connector for the thumb drive directly to my computer using a USB cable. Hope that works. Sound quality is acceptable to me (pre-recorded cassette tapes were never known for their audiophile quality). Recording and using Audacity is a little labor intensive but well worth the effort. I didn't want to just toss my cassettes in the trash. This device meets my expectations. I gave it four stars only because of the poorly written instructions.

I have really struggled to record a cassette tape (both sides) to a thumb drive, then to my computer. First I had to buy the thumb drive (which should have been included since it's necessary), then figure out how to connect the player into the drive and computer. I wanted to be able to play it from my computer. I found that I had to record the first side, save on my computer in a different location from the thumb drive, erase it from the thumb drive, then record side 2. It's old technology, so what did I expect? I think it will work fine for the purpose I need it for, but what a hassle! In reading the instructions over and over, I see that they are translated from Chinese or another language because they don't make sense. Anyway, I'm very frustrated because in trying to get it to record the 2nd side of the tape, I must have recorded over it, so it's lost.

works great. I've dubbed around 100 hours of cassettes so far and I have 100s more to go. A couple things that I do is I leave a pair of lightweight headphones plugged in and walk by to listen to see if the recording is done and I use a timer so I don't forget and leave it running because it will just keep on recording even when the tape ends. I have been dubbing home recordings of conferences or classes or LPS. some tapes or 30 minutes of side and some are 45 and some aren't recorded all the way to the end. That's why I use the timer and headphones. The USB Drive I use has a small red light inside the bottom that I can see flashing that shows me it is recording. Read the instructions they are pretty clear. The green light shows that it's on fast flashing shows that is recording and then the slower flashing I believe it is for playback. I've transferred all my recordings to my computer and everything has played back fine. Only one tape got caught in it after recording very many and I'm sure it was the tapes fault because a lot of them are like 20 years old. And make sure you check that those old tapes don't have any mold growing on them you'll see white stuff or suspicious looking things on old tapes you have. Same thing goes for v_h_s tapes if you have any of those laying around especially if you're in a humid area like I am.