Panasonic RQ2102 Shoe Box Recorder

i bought this to read my little girls bedtime stories aloud and record them for when we aren't home. we've also had their grandparents from out of town read their favorite books onto tape. it works GREAT for this purpose...and the kids love playing with it too, in between. very sturdy.

I got this tape recorder and plugged it in, but the tape heads wouldn't even turn. It made some sort of noise and that was the end of that. I had to return it for a refund. It felt very light and cheaply made--too bad-- I liked the looks of it. I am going to try another shoe box recorder from a different company.

this is as good as the tape recorders they sell for over 50 dollars at radioshack and its only 20 i use it to record my rock band and it sounds almost as good as the 150 dollar tascam portastudios it doesnt eat tapes it has 1 button recording and i dont see were the other reviewer said he could barely hear it on playback he musta had a defected 1 cause the playbacks very loud and clear im very happy with this item i record my entire band on it every instrument can be heard clearly and the playbacks loud without static it even comes with the ac adapter and a handle to carry it this is a steal i might buy another at this price

I doubt that they are all this bad. Maybe I just got "lucky". The first time I put the tape in, the motor could hardly pull the tape. When I tried to record, it played back all shaky, like a playing a record off-center on a turntable. I returned it.

I bought this tape recorder after I read a good review here. If the review was truethful, I must have gotten one from a bad production batch. With the volume set at the mid-range, I could hardly reproduce any audible sound. The volume has to be at maximum before I could hear discernible voices without putting my ear right above the speaker. It also records a lot of anoying background noise. I had bought recently an Aiwa micro-cassette tape recorder which turned out to be nearly useless. I was hoping this one, using a full size cassette and with a large speaker, would not have the problem of smaller one. But that was not the case.