- Gadhouse unveils Eric (a new CD player, not a robot)
- It’s about a third of the price of other portable options we’ve seen
- Bluetooth, multiple headphone jacks, an FM radio receiver and a screen
I write one piece of audio news every day of the week for TechRadar’s audio editor, and it’s been ages since I covered any new earbuds or headphones for her. Why? Because so many new CD players, turntables and cassette players are launching. It’s like I’m working in the 80s.
Taking the spotlight today is Eric. Not any old Eric; the Gadhouse Eric, with unconfirmed reports (which I’ve only just made up) saying that it was named after a man down the pub. Gadhouse is apparently turning into a madhouse for the physical media revival, after showing us the Gadhouse Miko cassette player earlier this year — and let’s not forget last year’s Gadhouse Duke & Roy powered speakers and turntable combo for vinyl lovers.
The Gadhouse Eric is set to cost just $84.50 / £59.99 (about AU$120), so it’s a lot cheaper than the likes of the Shanling EC Player or FiiO DM13; they’re both about three times the price.
At that money, this could be the budget portable CD player to beat. It’s on sale right now, though Gadhouse says that it’ll be launching new color options through 2027.
You want a CD player to do one thing: play CDs. Eric does that, sorted. Wait, it does more?
That’s right, Gadhouse has slapped an FM radio receiver into the Eric, so you can skip the doomsday prepping with a hand-cranked option and use this if you’d prefer. This is presumably arranged via its little display, and the slider you can see in the picture.
What else does it do? Well, it lets you connect wirelessly using Bluetooth, which I bet your grandad’s CD player doesn’t do. It also has not one, but two 3.5mm audio jacks; you can connected to two headphones at once to share music, or connected to a hi-fi system if you’d prefer.
If there’s any potential problem I foresee, it’s that the battery life is only 4 hours long, so you’re going to struggle taking this travelling. It can be recharged via a USB-C port in the back.
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