You are in the land of 'eye candy', as sonically the unit is a dud. If someone is looking for the best cassette player they will want the Nakamichi Dragon.I’ve been laughing over this one since 2014. The 1000ZXL Limited bar none is the finest compact cassette recorder ever made. They record with a flat response from 20Hz to 20kHz (15Hz to 28 kHz -3dB at -20dB DIN), that’s R2R territory.
The Dragon is the most well known Nakamichi, and strengths are auto azimuth alignment in playback. This is a great feature to have for pre-records and on tapes that were azimuth aligned when recorded. With the 1000ZXL’s A.B.L.E (Azimuth,Bias,Level,EQ) system any tape can be optimized for its maximum potential prior to recording. This coupled with discrete Crystal-Alloy heads make this an unassailable cassette recording platform that was never bested by anything that followed.