The 65 x 45 x 21mm unit feels great in the hand and its sleek black styling really looks the part too, the whole thing is wedge shaped so that the lower edge which one assumes contains the battery is more bulbous than the top edge. The black case is lifted by a silver surrounded 5 way joystick mounted to the right of the small OLED screen, this is the main control used in conjunction with a row of 4 buttons on the top edge of the 1900.

Perhaps the only styling element we didn't like was the large sticker proclaiming 153 hours battery life that Mobiblu have fastened to the front of the player, it's easily removed but we had to leave it on this demo unit. On the tech specs the DAH-1900 supports both MP3 files and also WMA including those encoded with digital rights management, plus it can also encode directly in MP3 from line in, inbuilt microphone or the FM tuner.

Getting media onto the Mobiblu DAH-1900 was our first task and this being the 1Gb model it can swallow a fair few MP3 tracks, luckily the USB 2.0 connection is more than up to the job and there is no need to load special software you can just drag and drop tracks over to the player. Once windows had recognised the unit as a removable drive it was easy the add either single files or whole albums in folders, these also transfer with their full ID3 tags so its easy to find them on the unit.

Having got close on 1gb of files onto the Mobiblu we wanted to put this "worlds longest battery life" claim to the test and so created a play list of around 3 albums of tracks and set the player running. For good measure we also set the hold switch located on the rear of the device, this should stop anything upsetting our test. The claimed 153 hours did seem a bit optimistic and after a full charge via USB it was time to set the player running and disappear off for a few days, in fact we kept checking back every so often and found that it was still going strong.

We did actually use the player during this time both in the office and while commuting, the audio quality is good although a little lacking in weight even with isolating earphones like our test Shure E2C's, volume is plenty loud enough even for the London Tube. Overall quality and listening experience is a pleasurable one with all the detail we'd expect of a high quality player and a distinct lack of hiss or electrical noise which often plagues hard disk devices.

After 5 days and approximately 10 hours the Mobiblu DAH-1900 finally ran out of juice and just as we were celebrating the fact we'd drained it dry it was quickly pointed out that it had lasted longer than 5 Apple iPod's would have managed. The only downside of this Olympian battery life is that it shows that the 1gb model on this unit isn't enough, there is also a 2gb model which just about offers enough music storage to stop you hearing the same track twice. Sadly the DAH-1900 also known as the B153 does not support gapless playback of those favourite mix CD's ripped into MP3 will be full of little and annoying gaps. Another annoyance is the lack of support for the proprietary formats from Apple and Sony (ACC and Atrac3) but also the complete lack of support for Ogg Vorbis our format of choice and a growing requirement of the open source brigade.

Driving the DAH-1900 is quite good fun, the 5 way joystick is easy to use and you quickly get the hang of how to dive into the music library and lets face it moving through folders isn't rocket science. Some of the other features like changing the music mode do require use the row of extra buttons on the top edge, annoyingly these are embossed with small symbols and letters to denote their functions which are difficult to read in all but prefect light. The screen however is tuning and is both easy to read and stylish at the same time, it activates with each key press and has a time out so you don't drain the battery.

We then went on to test all those extra features like voice recording, alarm clock and using the player as a USB key, all worked perfectly, perhaps the most impressive is the direct MP3 encoding which allows you to directly make MP3 files from the FM radio or from an analogue audio source. Unlike many MP3 players with encoding you get real MP3 tracks not WAV files or low bitrate recordings. There are a few Japanese like features (on this Korean made device) like song lyrics, where you can download or create? lyrics so they scroll along on the screen. Perhaps we can create the worlds smallest Karaoke car with a Mobiblu and a case of Stella?

Overall the killer feature has to be the combination of size and that massive Lithium Ion battery, our tests showed it runs for days on end continuously but just imagine what that means for your average commuter using it for 2 hours a day? That's right 65 days without needing a charge! On sale for £109 for the 1gb model or just £139 for the 3gb model we think the Mobiblu DAH-1900 or B153 offer stunning value for money.

Published - 09/05/2006

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