Analogue heaven: the best cassette players

Shopping

Cassette tape players are the new retro essential for your home, as tapes make a major comeback in music. Here are the best to buy now.

we are rewind - Serge Orange

Oh yeah, this is a beautiful thing with all the retro cool you want but also with modernised touches to make it pleasingly user-friendly. It is made from aluminium, like the original Walkman and comes in three different colours named after musical icons - Serge, Keith and Kurt. Yet it also a bluetooth facility, allowing you to connect it to your headphones or speaker, and a rechargeable lithium battery to allow for longer playback. There's also an audio input, allowing you to make your own mixtapes - ah, remember them? Making a mixtape for your pal or romantic interest, drawing on some artwork, posting it to them...ah man, let's face it the digital world is worse isn't it? Buy now - £149.99

Teac W1200 twin cassette deck

Beautiful pro twin cassette deck which also has a USB output - meaning you can transfer tapes onto digital, to store them. But of course, what we're most into, is the straight up cassette playback, which this excels at, with noise reduction to minimise tape hiss and the quality to ensure that smooth, analogue sound. Also has a mic input so you can record yourself onto tape. Perfect for happy times DJ-ing mixtapes or indeed warbling your little retro heart out. Buy now - £499.99

Mypin cassette player

Lovely little bluetooth cassette player that can hook up to your speaker or ear buds. But of course, for the true throwback feel you'll want to be making use of the headphone jack and plug in with some proper old school spongey 'phones. Quality. Buy now - £35.99

FiiO CP13 Cassette Player

Beautiful little minimalist player, designed to perfection. It's sleek, understated, cool, just a joy to use. And the meticulous approach extends to the fully analogue circuitry inside, which all the warmth and richness of analogue sound and then some. It makes music meaty, deep, just better basically. This is a gem of a buy. Buy now - £99.99

GPO Silver Brooklyn Boombox Stereo

This is an all-in-one cassette player, CD player, bluetooth speaker, radio and probably an air fryer too. Which is great, but really, this is all about the looks: a classic boombox throwback to hip-hop block parties in 80s New York. It's just sexy. Buy now - £270

TANDBERG TCD 440A Cassette Tape Recorder

Now of course, a scour on ebay will reveal a great many vintage cassette decks, walkman's and other analogue wet dreams. If you are going down that path, there's some incredible - and incredible looking - pro decks that will stun you with their sound. Tandberg's were renowned for being built like tanks, so you should still get a great sound from the likes of this...aficionados, fill yer boots... Buy now - £560