I never owned a micro cassette, but I worked with people who used them a lot. I would not expect the quality to be great. I did use standard cassettes a lot as my main music medium for years. Now everything is digital, but you still rely on the quality of the microphone. I've seen @ale.dri use basic mics for lo-fi results. Of course now you have plug-ins to emulate those sounds.
Lofi is all the rage and thats great, it is encouraging us to seek imperfection in a world of pristine mass produced music. Artists like Yann Tierson, Olafur Arnalds and others are known for passing piano sounds through tape machines. So coool.
I did own a tape recorder once and loved it. I recorded stories for my Grandmother to listen to and did all of the different characters voices.
My mum used a reel to reel for her dance classes for a long time before cassette took over. He is right about belts perishing. I had to replace one in our record deck, but then it is pretty old.
I think I still have some cassettes, but don't have a deck set up. I had a portable mono one for storage for my BBC Micro, but that is long gone.
Tape was a convenient medium. You could pass around cassettes or VHS to friends. Of course a lot of copying went on.
Be kind, rewind.