I had dreadful cassette players growing up, though I recently (in the last few years) picked up a new old stock HS-PC202MIII and it sounds fabulous.
I buy a lot of digital music off of bandcamp and where possible I buy a cassette (inclusive of a digital copy), just because of the different experience when listening with that format.
Aiwa... Now that's a name I haven't heard of in a long time.
This is one of the many Walkmans I went through.
https://www.just-cassette.com/post/aiwa-hs-r610-portable-cas...
Portable CD players (too bulky/sensitive) and even Mini-disc (atrac! ugh) never filled the gap, try as I might.
Unrealistically I hoped DAT would be the next best thing.
Memories!