Victrola Vintage 3-Speed Bluetooth Portable Suitcase Record Player

I bought one of these recently so I could listen to some records from my collection while dog-sitting at my dad’s house for a week (he’s been having issues with his old sound system), and I went in expecting this thing to have really bad sound — everyone should, this price point doesn’t exactly scream quality. That’s why I bought a new set of external speakers to bypass the crappy built-in ones; problem solved, right? Not exactly. The thing you have to beware of when purchasing this portable player — which I found out immediately when hooking it up and dropping the needle on a record, is that while it does have an RCA output for external speakers, plugging in an external source does NOT silence the built-in speakers. So when you turn the volume up on the turntable even with external speakers plugged in, the built-in speakers get turned up too, giving you sound from two different sources simultaneously which is incredibly obnoxious; you should be given the option to have the sound come out of one source or another, not be forced to use both sources at once. What makes this even more of a serious design flaw is that, sure, you could in theory turn the volume down on the turntable to almost zero and then turn the volume on your externals up so that evens things out and you effectively get decent sound from one source, but what I found when I did so was a complete lack of bass response which totally defeats the purpose of the external speakers to begin with. So you’re doomed either way: whether you go through the crappy built-in speakers or externals, you still get bad sound quality. And now it’s too late for me to return it as I foolishly already threw away the manufacturer’s packaging which is required for all Amazon returns, so to get a majority of my money back I’m forced to return the speakers instead which I’m sure would’ve be decent if used with a different device. So please learn from my mistakes: don’t purchase this portable player. And if you do, please keep the original packaging so you can return it if you don’t end up enjoying it.