years after this debate but the simple question is 'what is the deck to be used for? If you will only record and play back from the same deck almost all of the top decks are equal, give or take some small differences. HOWEVER if you have a long standing cassette collection made on different decks, nakamichi and non-nakamichi and if you intend to buy pre-recorded cassettes then there is ONLY one deck to buy and that is the Dragon. For the playing of pre-recorded cassette it is the one and only king of decks.
