Lucky find

[BillDWVA]

Since these were throway items finding one in nice condition like that must be rare indeed.

More generally with these small 1960s/1970s cassette recorders, how good were they? Little better than dictaphone or were some of them capable of reasonable performance?

When I was a schoolboy in the early 1970s we coveted our cassette recorders: One school chum had an ITT that looked very much like this one, if not the same model. It performed better than the Philips N2214 another had and they were both way better than the Binatone that was all I could muster in those impecunious days. As I studied and read up on ‘proper’ tape recorders (I.e. reel-to-reel), I became even more dismayed to discover that my Binatone had DC erasure.

[Refugee]

I got an unknown brand one second hand that was DC bias and erase and was bought another different unknown brand one that was the same.
They were both dreadful on record.
I have got an early 1/16 inch format dictophone that has AC bias and it records much better than either of those cheap cassette machines.
I bought an ITT mono shoe box style cassette machine a couple of years ago and it does indeed have AC bias.