Decent Specification Good price (Blaupunkt Acapulco MP 52)

Member Name: ahenry

Product:	Blaupunkt Acapulco MP 52
Date:	20/06/03 (1036 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Decent Sound Quality, Reasonable price, Wide range of inputs

Disadvantages: A bit plasticky

The Blaupunkt Acapulco MP52 is a cut down version of the Woodstock. You don't get the Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) tuner and you can't play MP3 files from the MMC card reader, but its half the price and the rest of the specification is almost identical.
It costs £180 including delivery from http://www.bluespot.co.uk/stock/acapulco.asp

The main features are a CD player that can also play MP3 files, and is compatible with CD-R and CD-RW disks (its best to use silver disks and not coloured ones CD-Rs. Coloured bought music CDs are fine though).

The radio has uses DigiCeiver® technology. This converts the analogue signal from the aerial into a digital one, and cleans up the signal a bit. The display is big and multicoloured display, with a clock and a spectrum display (that you can turn off). At night the display is blue.

One very nice feature is that you can fit a microphone which listens to the ambient noise in the car and increases the volume when the road noise increases. I don't know if this means that it means that the music gets louder if your spouse tries to talk to you. There is also a self-adjusting digital 5-band equaliser. You can have different settings for the tone and volume for each different sound source (radio, CD, CD changer or aux input, traffic announcements)

There is a 4 x 50 Watts amplifier. This is as powerful as you can get without having to run a thicker power cable from the battery. If you want to run an external amplifier then there are outputs for that. The sound quality is pretty good.

You can also add a CD changer or two auxiliary inputs (eg a walkman cassette player or an external MP3 player). One of the nice things about Blaupunkt head units is that you can get adaptor leads to connect them up to the steering wheel remote controls for a range of different manufacturers (£48 for a Ford). If you have a Vauxhall you can also get something to display the text on the dashboar
d display. Blaupunkt also sell their own steering wheel remote controls that are a bit cheaper.

The build quality of the fascia panel is OK, although the buttons do feel a bit plasticky and wobbly. If you want something that feels nicer, then the Los Angeles MP72 is another £50 or so.

The Blaupunkt WWW site http://www.blaupunkt.co.uk/7642265310_main.asp has a link to an online simulation. This lets you "press" the buttons and see what happens.

Summary: