Maxell MCXP-P100S is another modern portable cassette player, this time with a speaker

Last month Maxell introduced a new portable cassette player for the Japanese market that combines retro features (it's… a portable tape cassette player) with modern touches (like a rechargeable battery, USB-C port, and Bluetooth audio support).

Now the company has added another model to the lineup. The new Maxell MXCP-P100S has all the features of the previously-announced MXCP-P100, plus one more: a built-in speaker.

The new model's 0.5 watt mono speaker isn't exactly going to make this little audio player the life of the party, but it does offer a way to share your music with others if you don't have a wired or wireless speaker handy.

There's still a 3.5mm audio jack and support for Bluetooth 5.4 though, so you can use headphones or an external speaker.

Maxell says you can expect up to 9 hours of battery life using headphones, up to 7 hours using Bluetooth, or up to 6.5 hours when using the speaker.

That speaker does add a little bulk to the portable audio player: it measures 122 x 91 x 45mm and weighs 235 grams, making it a bit thicker and heavier than the MXCP-P100, which is 38mm thick and 210 grams.

Since the speaker is on the front of the device, you also have a much smaller clear plastic window that reveals a smaller portion of the tape cassette inserted into the player.

With an expected price tag of about $100, the MXCP-P100S is also about $10 more expensive than the model without a speaker. But neither are exactly high-end devices. Both have relatively limited functionality – they play tapes, and that's about it. There's no recording functionality, no noise reduction technology, and no special features. And like most other recent tape cassette hardware, they likely use relatively cheap, low quality hardware.

That said, while there are certainly audiofiles who will complain that modern tape cassette players don't offer the same audio quality as high-end hardware from decades ago, I think appeal of modern cassette players is the imperfection. Some bands that can (and do) distribute new music digitally have recently started to embrace tape as a cheap way to distribute physical media with a grittier, more DIY feel than you'd get from CDs, for example.

There's no getting around the fact that portable cassette players are niche devices in 2025 though. But it's interesting to see that not only is a classic name reentering this space, but it's offering different models with different features.

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