Functional if not exceptional (Napa DAV 310)

Member Name: hugon

Product:	Napa DAV 310
Date:	14/02/02 (356 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Plays MP3 and VCDs, Good sound reproduction

Disadvantages: Poor battery life, Occasional clicks on MP3 playback, Poor design, awkward to use

I bought the Napa Dav310 from a friend second hand as he rarely used his model. It retails for between £70 and £80 new, and I paid £50 for my unit, which I considered a bargain. The Napa plays MP3s burn onto CDs, as well as ordinary CDs, and has the added function of a video out to play VCDs.

Inside the box you get a fair amount of wires: there’s a mains adapter, the video out lead, the audio out lead, earphones and a remote control. The camera comes with an internal battery, which is the only source of power. This is shame as the battery seems to be very weak, it only provides about two hours play in normal CD mode, and the battery itself isn’t even enough to power VCD output, you must attach the external power supply to get a picture output. Added to the fact that you cannot change batteries, just use the internal one supplied, and this severely limits the portability of the unit.

The supplied earphones are acceptable, if not of the highest quality. They are of the in-the-ear type, but I didn’t find them particularly comfortable to use, and the sound reproduction was a little flat, but replacing them with a pair of similar Sony earphones yielded a huge improvement in quality.

The remote control is used mainly for VCD playback, but the forward/reverse functions will also work for the CD or MP3 playback. The remote is credit card sized, and only a couple of millimetres thick.

The anti-shock is also a large issue. When playing MP3s, which do not require constant rotation of the CD, the anti-shock is quite durable and playback trouble free despite any knocks. However, during normal CD audio playback, the slightest nudge will cause pauses and skips in your music, and as this is intended as a portable audio player, this is not really acceptable.

The unit has a LCD on the front, which displays current track number, and time elapsed on track, as well as the medium being played. There is a forward/backward butt
on for skipping through tracks, a stop, play and volume control buttons, as well as a mode button which lets you enter random or repeat modes. There is a slider button on the front to turn bass boost off and on, and another slider on the side to turn the hold button off to avoid turning the unit on accidentally when carrying it. However, another disappointing feature is the last of a fast forward or rewind feature for fast navigation through the tracks, you can only skip entire tracks, rather than fast forward or rewind through them. The unit itself is also larger than most of the portable CD players on the market today, at about 15x15cm in dimensions.

MP3 playback is as good as CD quality, to my ears anyway, on 128kps MP3 tracks. The unit supports bitrates of 96Kps and above, and also supports variable bitrate Mp3s, though it has trouble working out the track duration with this and the time flicks around as the track plays, but playback is unaffected. The unit itself falls down in the actual design at this point, with an MP3 CD typically holding more than 100 tracks, there is no actual method on the unit itself to skip multiple tracks, and you must navigate through each track individually. The remote control has buttons to skip forward or backward by ten tracks, but this is hardly practical.

I mentioned before that MP3 playback is good, and for 99% of the time it is. However, I have noticed definite clicks and artefacts that don’t exist when I play the MP3s back on my PC. It affects the odd track, and what I’ve noticed it affects certain media more than others – for instance, I noticed more clicks on Memorex media than on Datasafe media. Another irritating factor is the player will only recognise the first session of any mulitsession disks, meaning you must compile your Mp3 CDs in one go.

VCD playback is also good without being excellent. The leads supplied only allow you to connect to a TV that can accept individual lea
ds for video, and left and right audio, so I had to purchase an additional scart adapter, which was only about £5. The remote control is the easiest method of controlling the VCD, as it provides method for fasting forward or reverse, and skipping through chapters and scenes.

Playback for the most part is smooth, and the picture reproduction is definitely better than watching them on my PC. It suffers from the occasional stutter, where the picture will lock for a second and then skip to the correct point. This is down to the player rather than the actual media again, as the fault is not reproduced in a DVD player or when watching on my PC. I find best sound results are achieved by turning the bass off on the unit, and turning the unit volume up to maximum, and then using volume control on my TV as normal. VCD picture quality comes in at somewhere between VHS and DVD, and all depends on the source – frequently during fast moving scenes, the picture can become blocky, but this is a limitation of the format itself rather than the player.

The VCD itself has a useful feature called “Digest”, where you press a button on the remote, and it shows nine small screens on your TV, each with a picture from the VCD. This is useful for skipping directly to a part of the VCD, as most VCDs are not broken up into scenes or chapters like a standard DVD. There is also a time button, which will let you enter specific time and take you to that point on the VCD.

Having paid £50 for this, I’m quite pleased with it, I take it to work where it sits on my desk and is connected to the mains, and I use it at home for VCD playback, as it’s better watching them on a 21” TV rather than on a 15” monitor. However, had I bought this for portable use, I’d have been grossly disappointed at the poor antishock and weak battery life. As it’s intended as a portable player, it cannot really be recommended as such, but as a home
unit for VCD or MP3 playback, it is quite sufficient. It’s a bonus that it can play VCDs as well as MP3s, but as a dedicated MP3 player, there are better models out there.

Summary: