The Syitren R300 has a key feature that sets it apart from the portable CD players I remember from my 30s: a Bluetooth transmitter. Due to this added twist, I can easily play my CDs through any Bluetooth-equipped speaker, headphones, soundbar, or car audio system. The R300 also has a headphone jack and an optical digital audio output, so you can connect it directly to an audio system and get subtly better sound by bypassing Bluetooth (though I’ve never bothered).

Another convenient feature is the R300’s internal battery, which charges through a USB-C jack. It ran for about nine hours, and that meant I could use the R300 anywhere I wanted without connecting a power supply and without having to buy AA batteries by the dozen.

The top of the player has a comfortably chunky roller knob to control volume, plus the usual play/pause and track-skip buttons. I loved being able to control the volume right from the player, rather than having to get up to adjust the volume on the speaker. A display under the translucent cover gives you info, such as the number of the track that’s playing, the playing time for each track, the battery charge level, and the Bluetooth connection status.

Some might worry that an under-$100 CD player doesn’t deliver all the sound quality that the format is capable of. But over decades of following the scientific literature on audio, I’ve seen scant evidence that listeners can reliably detect differences among digital source devices, and all the brand-concealed listening tests we’ve done at Wirecutter support this statement. Such differences, if they exist, would vanish when heard through the inexpensive gear that R300 buyers are likely to use.

Unfortunately, the R300 sold out shortly after this article originally posted, and Syitren reported it wouldn’t be back in stock for at least a month. In the hope of finding an alternative, I bought the Skyans KC-918, a similar but less-expensive portable CD player that has a Bluetooth transmitter and adds a built-in speaker and USB input. Unfortunately, its controls were nearly impossible to see without holding it up to a light, the Bluetooth pairing process was unreliable, and the headphone output was noisy. So we recommend you hold out for the R300.