CDs are still one of the best ways to listen to music since they offer high-quality lossless audio in an affordable and portable medium. But these days, a lot of people don’t have CD drives on their computers, and if you’re interested in exploring the format, you need a way to listen to those precious CDs. That’s where a portable CD player comes in, and the Arafuna Portable CD Player from Amazon is one of the best options right now.

The Arafuna looks like nearly every popular portable CD player from the early aughts, but it has a few modern features, including a rechargeable battery and EQ presets. I put this player to the test to see if it’s worth taking your old CDs out of storage for.

Price, specs, and availability

The Arafuna Portable CD Player costs $65 and can be purchased from Amazon. It comes in one color: classic black. It’s the size of any standard portable CD player, measuring 5.5 x 5.5 x 1.14 inches and weighing 9.2 ounces.

The Arafuna has a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which charges with an included USB-C cable. Battery life is around 12 hours, and fully charging the 1400mAh battery takes about 4 hours.

This CD player has a 3.5mm port for wired headphones or earbuds. It also features a built-in speaker if you prefer to listen to music out loud. Of course, you can also plug it into a speaker using the 3.5mm port. The Arafuna comes with a pair of not-very-good earbuds. With those, you get two pairs of different sized ear tips. This device doesn’t support Bluetooth, so you will need to use wired headphones or earbuds with it.

While the Arafuna is all-around a standard portable CD player, it does have a few features that make it stand out when compared to cheaper or older portable CD players. Alongside the aforementioned rechargeable battery and built-in speaker, it has anti-skip technology and EQ presets.

What I liked about the Arafuna Portable CD Player

It’s everything a CD player should be

The Arafuna Portable CD Player is easy to use, which I appreciate. It’s a standard CD player, you just put the CD in, turn it on, and press play. You don’t need to do anything else to enjoy your music. In true retro tech fashion, I also like that there’s no Bluetooth connectivity. The size and shape of the device reminded me a lot of my old Sony CD player from when I was younger, with its compact, round shape and ease of use.

However, the Arafuna does have a few extra features that the CD player I had growing up didn’t. For example, the Arafuna has a built-in speaker and can play music off a micro SD card, both of which were not common in older CD players, and they’re handy to have. More notably, it has EQ settings.

You can choose between the default EQ, bass boost, pop, jazz, rock, and classic. The default EQ setting has a standard consumer sound profile, with slightly boosted bass and balanced highs and mids, and it’s enjoyable as a default setting. The next setting, bass boost, has overwhelmingly loud bass and sub-bass frequencies, to the point where everything sounds muddled and treble is masked by the volume of the bass. The pop and jazz settings are quite similar in that they both have more boosted treble, but pop sounds a bit flatter than jazz, which has slightly louder mids and some bass frequencies than pop. Rock is a very enjoyable EQ setting, with treble that falls in the typical range of a guitar being boosted, louder snare, as well as a bit of a bass boost, just enough to make bass lines sound lovely while not taking away anything from the rest of the track. Lastly, the classic setting has louder bass than the default EQ setting but is otherwise similar. I liked the rock setting the most, as well as jazz. I think the default EQ setting would suit most people just fine, but it depends on your listening preferences.

I tried these EQ settings using my Sony WH-1000XM4 and Audio-Technica ATH-SR50 headphones, as well as my Skullcandy Jib and Sony MDR-EX15AP earbuds, and all of them gave me similar results with each of the EQ settings. If you use studio headphones with a more flat frequency response, you may find the bass frequencies aren’t as loud as described with some of the EQ settings, but it will certainly be loud enough with the default, bass boost, and classic EQ settings.

The device has anti-skip protection, which, in my experience, worked really well. Walking around, jostling the CD player around, and even tossing it up and down didn’t cause any skipping or buffering when I listened to music, making the Arafuna a great CD player for if you want to take it with you on a walk or a run, or even a bumpy train ride. I can’t say the same about my childhood portable CD player. That old thing skipped all the time.

What I didn’t like about the Arafuna Portable CD Player

It has a few small shortcomings

Finding something to dislike about the Arafuna was difficult since I genuinely had such a great time using it. The only two problems I could identify are so minor they’re basically non-issues, but they’re worth mentioning anyway since they could be consequential to someone with different listening habits than myself.

The first potential issue is that the built-in speaker, while passable, isn’t great. It’s fine if you want to get the gist of the music on your CD, but if you really want to hear all the nuances of your CD and enjoy it, you’re going to want to use headphones or a good external speaker instead.

The second, which is related, is that while the Arafuna comes with earbuds, they’re not very good, nor are they very comfortable. They only come with two ear tips, large and small ones, and neither fit my ears very well. I would recommend using your own earbuds or headphones with this CD player as a result.

Should you buy the Arafuna Portable CD Player?

The Arafuna is a solid choice for those looking for a CD player to carry around with them or enjoy at home. It’s compact enough to fit in a tote bag or backpack, and its 12-hour battery life ensures it can fare well on a train or plane ride. The EQ presets are a really nice touch. The Arafuna hits all my criteria for a good CD player, and the micro SD support and EQ are two big pluses. I had a profound sense of nostalgia using the Arafuna, since it bears so many similarities to the CD player I used most as a kid, but it’s updated enough in its features and design that it was an all-around better experience than using a 20-year-old Sony CD player.

The Arafuna is not for anyone who wants a CD player to listen to out loud without an external speaker to plug it into. The built-in speaker won’t be satisfying, and you’re better off getting a stereo with a CD player if that’s the case.