The modern, affordable all-in-one CD player

UK CD sales peaked in 2001, when we bought 225.9 million discs worth £2.2 billion. Convenient, affordable and genuinely excellent in quality, the compact disc was, and remains, a format valued by listeners who want simplicity and reliability. These days, sales top out at 10.5 million, but there is renewed interest.

- Chris Haslam

This could be to do with the fact many people, me included, are starting to experience 'streaming fatigue', where access to all the music ever recorded at the swipe of a finger isn’t necessarily as fulfilling as we had imagined.

New and secondhand CD sales are buoyant, vinyl remains strong, and it’s clear that listeners are turning back to ownership and physical media. The good news is that the audio industry has noticed, and there is a growing wave of low- and mid-priced systems that bring discs back into the home. Many of these new models combine a CD player with streaming and radio in a neat, all-in-one unit.

CD players never disappeared from hi-fi circles, and longstanding brands such as Marantz, Cyrus and Cambridge have continued to produce excellent dedicated players. But if you want to reintroduce CDs without building a full hi-fi stack, there are superb modern options.

In the almost all-in-one category, where you simply add a pair of bookshelf speakers, the Denon RCD-M41DAB (£269; denon.com) remains one of the best traditional choices. It offers CD playback, DAB radio and a warm, confident sound. It is an older model, but its reliability and performance have helped it to stay popular.

If your budget stretches further, the Technics SA-C600 (£600; technics.com) is a refined just-add-speaker system that combines a CD drive, network streaming, a phono stage for vinyl and 120 watt amplification. It feels modern without being complicated and has enough power for most compact speakers. For something with classic styling, the Leak Stereo 130 (£1,339; leak-hifi.co.uk) is a beautiful, retro-inspired two box pairing of a CD transport and stereo amplifier. It brings together contemporary engineering and nostalgic design in a very appealing way.