With a budget of $200, that will limit your choices. I took a look at the specs of the Tandberg 4000X and I have cassette decks that could record and playback at a higher quality. It sort of defeats the purpose of saving space when a cassette deck would suffice if you are looking for a R2R deck that has a small footprint, but can give the excellent fidelity that open-reel decks can offer. I just don't see too many members out there owning this model. Nando.
Nando,
The cassette decks you are comparing it to weren't available in 1971-1974 when that Tandberg model was being produced. The 4000x and 3300 series used the same transport.
From the wiki on elcaset
"In 1976, it was widely felt that the compact cassette was never likely to be capable of the same levels of performance that was available from reel-to-reel systems, yet clearly the cassette had advantages in terms of convenience. The Elcaset system was intended to marry the performance of reel to reel with cassette convenience. The name "Elcaset" may simply mean L-cassette, or large cassette, since the 1/4" tape inside was double the 1/8" width found in standard cassettes."
The elcaset ran at 3 3/4 in per sec to try and get the S/N decent. My 3341 was 57db.(running on failing memory here.) The addition of the outboard Dolby unit added 10 db to that if you believe the marketing info that came with the Dolby unit. The Pioneer 707 is a better deck, but it followed 3 years later.....