If you are anything like us you'll have a drawer full of old technology and another drawer of old power supplied to match! Plus your CD collection will take up cabinets if not walls of your home and the thought of having to rip all of them to MP3 is daunting, plus when you first get your new MP3 player you'll want all of them digitised tomorrow and lets face it that isn't going to happen.

The Rio Volt MP3 CD player is a possible halfway house for those who don't want the big bang approach but need to mix and match MP3 and standard audio CD's in the same device, most of us have a PC or Mac capable of burning MP3's to CD and you can shoehorn some 10 hours of MP3 files onto a standard CD.

The Volt packs some 15hours of replay from its AA batteries and it operates much like a conventional Discman in its control and track listing, of course if you are accessing MP3 tracks you get all the usual track data and create play lists from the files on the disc, CD replay is as you'd expect. The audio quality of the Rio Volt is good and connecting it to a hifi produces very acceptable results, however the supplied headphones are poor a fact in common with many budget MP3 players, the Rio Volt is the top of the Rio CD / MP3 range and also includes and FM tuner for radio reception should you grow bored to the MP3 disc in the player.

The volt can manage MP3's encoded all the way up to 320Kbits and also will play the windows WMA format files, the software to RIP both formats is included in the Volts box which also has very good operation instructions. Even on CD replay the unit uses some internal memory to provide an 8 minute shock protection which makes this a good CD player for joggers and taking too the gym, perhaps a little large to slip in a pocket it fits neatly onto a belt or hides in a bag with the remote control to hand for easy operation.

Style wise the Rio Volt MP3 CD player is a nice package with the majority of the unit in matt black, with silver back, sides and controls and the now obligatory backlit LCD display in the lid, it all feels pretty well built too unlike some of those flimsy Discmans built back in the late 90's.

The best news is the price currently available from our partners Amazon at under £50 it is retailing for the kind of money you'd expect to fork out on a CD walkman let alone one that can play MP3's and WMA files, if you are nervous of making the move to MP3 and not being able to play ordinary CD's this is a great solution and one that with good headphones sounds good too.

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