This new cassette player has USB-C and Bluetooth, in case you want to ditch Spotify

Modern music services are all about convenience, but sometimes having every album ever at the touch of your fingertips leaves you with choice paralysis. If you’d rather bump your next mixtape or revisit your favorite albums with something a little more tactile, Maxwell might just have the gadget you’ve been waiting for.

The company showed off its latest cassette player on Threads this week, and despite cassettes being well and truly outdated, the resulting response ended up with the device selling out on Amazon. It’s easy to see why — this isn’t the same sort of cassette player you would’ve found gathering dust on store shelves 30 years ago. You won’t find Spotify on it, but in addition to a typical 3.5mm jack, Maxwell has added USB-C charging and Bluetooth audio support, allowing anyone to experience their cassette collection with the added convenience of modern listening.

The overall design is about as sleek as a cassette player can be, complete with a textured clip for easy carrying and an LED battery indicator to track its rated 11 hours of battery life when listening via Bluetooth. It also has tactile buttons along the top of the unit, with an elongated play button matched with stop, rewind, and fast forward. It comes in a single white colorway, and although it can play back any cassette you throw at it, it doesn’t appear capable of either recording or playing back anything that isn’t a cassette.

In a world dominated by streaming services featuring libraries you hold no ownership over and AI-generated playlists that lack the originality and emotion — sometimes too much emotion — of a handmade mixtape, Maxwell’s modernized cassette player feels like a bit of fresh air. Much as I may love this idea, though, I’m keeping my fingers crossed the next variant includes support for MP3 playback over microSD cards. After all, if we’re already adding Bluetooth, what’s a bit more modernity?

If you’re interested, you’ll need to be prepared to wait for it to come back into stock, as it’s currently completely sold out, though Amazon restored the ability to purchase it for its typical $99.99 asking price while I was prepping this article. Just don’t expect a shipping date right away.