To look at, Napa's MCD380 resembles a portable CD player, only much smaller. All the standard controls such as play, stop, skip and pause are located around the edges of the unit in convenient positions. As well as the unit-mounted controls, it comes with an in-line remote control which plugs into the headphone socket.
It's pretty chunky though, and easily as big as some smaller, solid state MP3 players we have seen. If the track has been named, the titles and track length will appear on the remote control LCD while it's playing.
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Burning MP3 data
Before you can use the MCD, you must burn your MP3 data onto a small, 8cm, 185Mb CD-RW. The data is then read from the disk and turned into audio. 185Mb equates to around 40 MP3s at near-CD quality so there is plenty of room on each mini CD to fit four or more albums.
As most MP3 players are restricted by the amount of memory they have, this makes the Napa much more versatile, as you can burn MP3s onto as many mini CDs as you like, then swap and change them when you fancy. They cost around £1 a pop and are increasingly available on the high street.
Further features include five preset equalizers for rock, pop, classical, jazz and normal, and a 160-second anti-shock system to prevent the music jumping if you are listening in the car or on a train.
Flimsy construction
Whether or not the unit would withstand much abuse is a matter for concern as the shell is plastic, and not tough either. To the touch it feels like the material they use to make clothes pegs, which is a little strange for something that's been designed to be portable.
Music to your ears
Despite its rather flimsy appearance, the delivery of the music is very good. This is aided by the inclusion of a nice pair of headphones, but it does ultimately depend on the quality of the MP3s that are being played.
The Napa MP3 CD player is a reasonable introduction to MP3 players for those without the cash to buy a hard disk MP3 player.
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