The MP3 player embedded on the Honda Navi system is simply amazing, presenting a terrific audio quality.

The highlight is its searching feature, which automatically recognizes artist names and album names, allowing you to search by artist, song or album. We haven’t seen this feature on other cars.

The support for memory cards is a nice feature to have, even though it is expensive for most users due to the cost of the memory card and the adapters needed to install the memory card on the card and to install the memory card on your computer. But it may be a handy option if you want to have hundreds of songs without the need of replacing CDs or if you already have a media player that uses a memory card to store its file and you want to use the same card on your car.

We don’t understand why car makers insist on using the obsolete PC Card (a.k.a. PCMCIA) slot instead of just putting a Compact Flash reader, forcing you to spend money on an adapter.

The unit is limited to 999 files, which isn’t hard to reach when you think that 16 GB Compact Flash cards are easily available.

Another thing that could be better is the audio info section on the bottom of the GPS map when the GPS is being used. We think it would be better to have the name of the artist or song there instead of “Folder 3 – Track 222,” for example.

In summary, MP3 capability of Honda vehicles with navigation system is above the average and will please almost all users (gadget-freaks would ask why we can’t play videos or DVDs on the LCD screen; this is a good question, by the way).