Car features Car MP3 cassette

Approximate cost of a car MP3 cassette: less than £5

Car MP3 cassettes are a great solution for old cars

If you drive an older car with a tape deck, one of the best options for listening to your music is a car MP3 cassette.

You simply push the ‘cassette’ into your tape deck, and plug the 3.5mm jack that hangs from it into your MP3 player’s headphone port. Then, as with a car MP3 transmitter, everything that comes out of the MP3 player is heard through the car speakers.

The real advantage car MP3 cassettes have over car MP3 transmitters is that the connection is direct, so you won’t get any audio interference when driving around the country.

However, don’t expect too much from the audio quality – you’re running MP3s (a highly-compressed format) through a tape deck in an old car.

We’ve also found car MP3 cassettes are, like tapes, prone to hissing, while the lead that hangs from them is often temperamental – which can mean your music cuts out if it’s not held in place.

That said, if you drive an older car, MP3 cassette adapters can’t be beaten for sheer value. At the time of writing, we found car MP3 cassettes for as little as 99p on eBay.

However, most cars with a tape deck also come with an FM radio, so check whether your MP3 player has a built-in FM transmitter (lots of the new MP3 players we’ve tested do). You may be able to use this feature instead of paying extra for a car MP3 cassette.