There are no latches or locks to the cassette compartment; it just opens using manual force. I loaded up a brand new copy of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the first thing that struck me is how terrible it sounds. Because I've never owned a cassette player in my life and have no point of reference, I can't really judge the functionality of the TPS-L2. I'm just going to assume that cassettes sound bad.

EDIT: According to the readers, there are many possibilities for my Walkman sounding bad: its head could be misaligned, dirty or there's a likelihood that my tape could have deteriorated over time. One comment was universal though - cassettes in general don't sound nearly as good as high fidelity options we have today.