If you like your music in physical format, you'll love this new portable player

Quick Summary

The ENSA P1 is a portable physical music player that uses disc shaped cartridges to store and play tracks.

This is a concept project that very much should get made as it's a great blend of modern design and old school mentality.

The ENSA P1 is a concept design portable music player from designer Vladimir Dubrovin. This uses physical discs to take your music offline and into a real experiential opportunity.

Much like portable CD or MD players of the past, the ENSA P1 uses cartridges that hold your music. These are specifically C-NAND memory, meaning you can load one up with an entire album to swap out as needed.

To be clear, the music is stored digitally like an MP3 player, yet the storage is removable, like mini disc. That should make listening to an album a far more deliberate and focused experience than you might get streaming online.

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The device itself looks fantastic with a hand-size form in silver and grey which holds the disc in its middle. This design follows form, showing that the music is there taking centre stage and physically being present and requiring focus as you enjoy.

There is a screen along the top for useful information like playback duration, play and pause, skip and the song, artist and album as well as volume. This all appears to be touchscreen so that you can interact directly to control what you're listening to.

In the top right there is also a dedicated circular screen. This appears to be used as a way to display the waveform of the music you're listening to. This should further enhance that physical representation, for the music being experienced both through the audio as well as this moving image.

The designer plans to have that C-NAND system as a storage medium. This could be used for you to write discs, and print labels using your own stored music at the quality you choose. It would also create an opportunity to make and sell music in this physical format directly by artists and labels.

Here's hoping this gets spotted for the great idea it is and we can see it become a reality soon.

Luke is a freelance writer for T3 with over two decades of experience covering tech, science and health. Among many things, Luke writes about health tech, software and apps, VPNs, TV, audio, smart home, antivirus, broadband, smartphones and cars. In his free time, Luke climbs mountains, swims outside and contorts his body into silly positions while breathing as calmly as possible.