[nickt]

It’s amazing to see this. How good are the transports in these modern units? I seem to remember when cassettes died the first time, the whole ecosystem went away, from Chrome Dioxide cassettes to good quality transports, which took a long time to get right. How do these compare to a good quality unit from the 80’s and 90’s?

[komali2]

Is transport the bit that reels the tapes? I watched a YouTube video recently about these that said that it seems all these modern ones are using basically the same mechanism from a PRC factory, and thus the minimum size is quite large.

Since Sony doesn't manufacture their phenomenally small mechanisms anymore, the era of the tape sized tape player is gone unless someone invests millions in r&d and setting up manufacturing.

Also in terms of quality: fine, but the video found better quality from vintage units he had cleaned up.

I don't have the video saved sorry.

[ares623]

The video is probably from the “techmoan” channel. Very good content.

[ares623]

They’re not very good. As the other comment said, they all use the same mechanism. It gets the job done, but that also means the “premium” models are rip offs. Basically lipstick on a pig, so to speak.

Sadly I don’t see new mechanisms appearing anytime soon. But there is still hope. There have been new film cameras with modern innards recently released.