I love cutting-edge OLED TVs and overpowered gaming laptops as much as the next person, but the absolute best thing I've seen at CES 2022 so far this year is distinctly old-school. And I mean really old-school. It's a modern take on something that Thomas Edison came up with in 1877.
I've already raved about the retro looks of Victrola's Bluetooth speakers, but I think I like one of their other products even more: the Re-Spin is a suitcase record player with retro looks and today's tech.
Put the needle on the record
I grew up in the 1970s, the golden age of vinyl. When I was a tot I had a Fisher-Price music box, a toy version of a suitcase record player, and when I was older I lusted after the Dansette-style record players my friends' parents or older siblings owned. My dad's turntable was technically better, but it didn't have the style. Or the suitcase.
Victrola's Re-Spin is giving me a massive nostalgia rush just from looking at the photos. They've absolutely nailed the design – not really a surprise, given they've been making turntables for over 100 years – but there's modern tech here too.
There's a dual-speaker enclosure designed to eliminate vibration for skip-free listening, two-way Bluetooth streaming so you can use it as an audio source or as a speaker, and there's an integrated pre-amp and RCA ports for connecting it to your Hi-Fi or AV kit.
I absolutely love this. I have no doubt that the sound won't be comparable to audiophile turntables, and it's hardly going to displace the Technics SL from our best record players guide. But then the Re-spin isn't in that price bracket, it's as affordable as, and doubles as, a portable Bluetooth speaker. I think the Re-spin is going to be a fun and fabulous blast from the past.
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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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