CD, cassette, MP3, karaoke: TEAC will sell you a retro hi-fi unit in 2025 that does the lot

Back when mobile phones were the size and weight of a house brick and giant shoulder pads were de rigueur, our hi-fi set-ups were equally as conspicuous.

Think big metal boxes in brushed aluminium, festooned with buttons, switches, flashing LEDs and a pair of mesmerizing sound meters. And that was likely just the amplifier.

No proper system of the 1980s would be complete without an equally outlandish cassette deck, a digital dialling FM tuner and one of those new-fangled compact disc playing thingies. And, for total one-upmanship, adding a graphic equalizer with as many frequency sliders as possible would be considered the icing on the cake for any aspiring audiophile.

The left side of the TEAC AD-850-SE houses a CD player and USB port. Picture: Scott Reid

Fast forward a few decades and it’s all gone a bit bland, just a tad too generic design wise. Sure, there are some outlandish components available if you’ve got the budget and are looking to make a statement. A few hundred thousand ought to get you a music-playing rig that will cause any onlooker’s jaw to drop.

But when it comes to the mainstream market, the affordable kit that most of us will look to for our musical fix, well, it just ain’t very sexy any more. Much of that is to do with market trends and how people consume music these days - chiefly via streaming services and very often on mobile devices. There’s simply no need for a stack of black or silver boxes when some smart speaker solution or sound bar can do the job.

The closest that most folks will get to “serious” audio nowadays is some form of app-controlled, one-box solution with maybe a record player tacked on just to keep in with the vinyl revival trend/bandwagon/bubble.

Lately, there have been attempts at recreating that 70s/80s hi-fi styling vibe from the likes of Leak, NAD and JBL - some more successful than others.

The right side of the TEAC AD-850-SE contains the cassette player/recorder and a microphone input with echo switch. Picture: Scott Reid

Even when it comes to the CD player - that must-have wonder of the mid-80s hi-fi tower that looks a little niche four decades on - there have been some glimmers of hope. Yamaha has been managing to shift a fair few of its CD-C603 five-disc, CD multi-changers, an item that must rewind the clock by a good 30 years or so. I wrote about the one I bought a few months back and its rotating, carousel loading drawer has rarely stood still since.

And that, for me, is one of the unit’s main attractions - it’s simply a fun thing to interact with. Just like those multi-buttoned amps, tape decks and equalizers of yore.

But its reign as the “most exciting hi-fi component you can buy in 2025” has been threatened by the arrival of another black box in recent days - one with a similar price tag (a little below £500) and a much higher knob-twiddling count and range of format options, beyond just playing CDs.

Step forward, the AD-850-SE from TEAC, the venerable Japanese electronics manufacturer whose roots go back more than 70 years.

A handy remote control is included duplicating most of the main functions on the unit's front panel. Picture: Scott Reid

As one-box solutions go, this unit ticks pretty much every box there is. It’s a CD player, with all the features expected of a reasonable CD player such as track programming and shuffle play. It’s a cassette player that’ll play back normal, chrome and metal tapes (remember those?) with a useful pitch control and digital tape counter. And it can also record onto blank tapes, providing they aren’t metal ones (if you do find unused old metal C-90s out there you will need very deep pockets indeed).

Adding to those old-school capabilities is the inclusion of a USB port on the unit’s front panel. Yup, this thing doubles up as a very useful digital recorder. Pop in a flash drive and you can transfer those CDs and pre-recorded cassettes onto a removable memory stick as simple MP3 files.

With the AD-850-SE hooked up to your amplifier you can also record via the unit’s line input, onto cassette, naturally, but also onto an inserted USB stick, opening up the possibility of digitising those precious vinyl discs.

There's even a microphone input with mic mixing available on playback and recording, plus an adjustable echo effect. Behold, you've got yourself a basic karaoke machine thrown in for your £470 or so.

It's a full, hands-on experience interacting with this one-of-a-kind TEAC. If a grand total of 31 assorted buttons, switches and knobs fails to excite there's a further 30 buttons on the included remote control.

If you have fond memories of compiling mix tapes back in the day then you're going to love using the cassette function, setting the record levels and trying to fade things out before the tape comes to an end.

There's not much choice when it comes to full-size cassette deck separates these days. In fact, there's pretty much this AD-850 and a sister TEAC W-1200 twin tape deck, and that doesn't give you the CD player and USB port.

Both units have come in for criticism from some quarters over their limited specification and it's true that any half decent cassette deck from the glory days of the 80s and early 90s will walk all over them. The quoted specs for wow and flutter - those tiny speed variations that can ruin some types of music - frequency response and noise levels don't offer encouragement. However, TEAC appears to be erring on the conservative side. They have done a fine job with the only cassette mechanisms still in production today - churned out in the main for cheapo boomboxes and born-again, Walkman-clone personal stereos - tweaking them to a level that is more than acceptable for 99 per cent of listening demands. I suspect much of the negativity directed at these units comes from non-owners. Oh yeah, I also have one of the W-1200s. And a 30-year-old Technics deck by way of comparison (it can still floor the new pretenders). You simply can't have too many cassette decks.

So there we have it. I enjoy using my turntable, assorted silver disc players and audio streamer, each of which costs a fair bit more than the AD-850-SE, but nothing comes close to the latter's fun factor. The dealer I bought mine from tells me they have been shifting them just as quickly as they can get hold of stock, and that doesn't really surprise me. It might be 2025, but here's a unique and highly tactile hi-fi component that will transport you back to 1985 (with a couple of modern touches neatly thrown in).

What is it?

The TEAC AD-850-SE is a single hi-fi separate component that can handle CDs, cassettes, play and record MP3 files via USB, play and record using an external microphone with echo function. Can be hooked up to any hi-fi amplifier and speakers. Retails for around £470 in the UK from Peter Tyson and Richer Sounds (at time of writing, summer 2025).

Scott Reid is a business journalist at The Scotsman and previously worked in the hi-fi industry from 1982 to 1997