Review of Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16K
Posted on April 23, 2007, by Conor O'Neill, under Bandon.
A brilliant machine that is much better than Commodore 64 or Vic 20 rubbish
Rated as /5 on Apr 23 2007 by Conor O’Neill
This review originally conceived November 1982:
My Dad contacted a workmate of his in the UK to see if they could get me one of the new ZX Spectrum home computers. I’ve wanted one of these since I saw the announcement but they are very expensive (over £100) so we went with the 16K model instead of the 48K.
It was finally purchased in WH Smiths and we met the guy up in Portlaoise on his way home.
I’ve never owned anything so complicated and was very excited opening the box and taking out the computer, the power supply, the manuals and the tapes. I hooked it up to our TV and to the power and then started twisting the tuning knob for that station.
But no matter what I did, I couldn’t get a picture on the screen. I didn’t know if it was the TV or the Spectrum. Cunningly I found the “beep” command in the manual but that didn’t seem to do anything either.
Our neighbour is a TV repair man and he came around a few days later. It turns out that our Ferguson’s tuner couldn’t tune that low. So he replaced it and I couldn’t believe it when he tuned in the Spectrum and I saw “Copyright 1982 Sinclair Research”.
The Horizons tape that came with it got boring pretty quickly but the couple of Psion games are good. I have just started learning BASIC from the manual and it is really easy.
I have also just begun buying magazines that are all about Sinclairs and I’m learning about all the games that are available and how the computer works inside.
Some of my friends have Speccys too and one of them realised that we could buy a cable to connect our two tape recorders together and copy games onto blank tapes. Sometimes we have to spend a long time adjusting the tape heads to make it work well. But the games are incredible even if they take ages to load.
I love the games from Quicksilva and Ultimate Play the Game but recently I discovered that most games are now written for the 48K Spectrum. A bunch of people in the magazines advertise memory upgrade chips and I ordered one of them using a sterling bank draft.
It was scary opening up the Spectrum but cool to see the processor and ULA. The socket for the memory chip was obvious and I pushed it in. It worked perfectly!
I hope to learn how to write games and maybe some day I’ll be as famous as Matthew Smith who wrote the incredible Manic Miner. I read that he is creating something even better. But what is “Monty Python”?
The Spectrum is miles better than anything by Commodore or Atari and has many more games than the BBC. It’s the best present I ever got.
12 Replies to "Review of Sinclair ZX Spectrum 16K"
conor on April 23, 2007
My one still worked the last time I checked. Not worth anything tho cos I replaced the original case with one that has a “proper” keyboard.
I thought I needed it for writing my “Jet Set Willy” killer-game. I designed tons of it and had a lot of code done but then college and drink came along and it lies unfinished like an undiscovered Van Gogh. Or something.
Quentin Gargan on April 23, 2007
Ah, the nostalgia. Mine was a Dragon 32, for which I had software in basic that did invoicing, stock control, ordering etc, all on two 8″ floppy disks.
But Sinclair was pure genius. What a shame that it was others who reaped the reward for his ingenuity. Digital watches, electric bicycles, even the C2 car, but the real world-changing innovation was the birth of the personal computer.
Robin Capper on April 23, 2007
Yikes, thought I was in a time warp as my reader showed your review before the “25th Annivesary story”. Remember them and wondering what changes the computer revolution would bring. Commenting on a blog from the other side of the world when I should be sleeping wasn’t one of them!
Alan in Belfast on April 23, 2007
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. A whole generation of coders learnt their skills typing magazine listings in on the Spectrum’s rubber keyboard, and then migrating onto other machines sich as C64s, BBC Micros, Amigas etc.
A one-off generation, since modern pimply-faced youths are all expert gamers, but hopeless coders!
conor on April 23, 2007
Ah the Dragon. Those mad Welsh 
Cudda bin a contenda with more games.
So many great machines never made it around then. I had such high hopes for the Elan/Flan/Enterprise. Awesome machine but far too late to market.
A quite moment of reflection please for:
The Oric 1
The Jupiter Ace
The Dragon 32/64
The Memotech MTX-500 (star of Weird Science!)
The Sinclair QL
The Enterprise
Agree re PC. A bit of bad licensing negotiation from IBM and look where we are today.
conor on April 23, 2007
I never migrated Alan I went Spectrum -> Mainframe -> PC apart from two horrific years with a Vax for which I’m still getting therapy.
Alan in Belfast on April 23, 2007
Nothing sucks like a Vax!
JD on April 23, 2007
The tears of joy! I had the Vic20 followed by the C64. I spent hours in Easons ‘removing’ the pages from the ‘home computer’ magazines, racing home, entering the code for hours and then watching a pixilated ball hop from one side to the other. Memories!
Daley Thompson Decathlon was the best though I do remember a voice synthesiser (enter the word and Mr Computer Voice verbalised it). Hours of fun with the latter in ringing the international operator in tel exchange and programming rudies down the line.
BTW, the C64 still works, plus the datassette!
Great review Conor.
conor on April 23, 2007
I always wanted a voice synthesiser. Still do for some weird reason.
Twenty, the only thing I ever heard about Daley Thompson was how it broke joysticks.
conor on April 23, 2007
Bloody Commodore and their “you have to buy our special tape recorder”.
Our school decided to ignore the BBC route and bought C64s. A whole bunch of them all wired up to one 5 1/4″ floppy drive that ran slower than most tape recorders.
Never managed to program the C64 sprite hardware - the main thing it had over the Spectrum. And Attack of the Mutant Camels of course.
Twenty Major on April 23, 2007
Aye, the Spectrum was cool. I still have one somewhere.