MobiBlu's B153 MP3 Player

The first thing I did when I got my hands on the MobiBlu B153 was charge it up via my PC's USB port. Then I loaded it up with a few CDs' worth of Pizzicato Five, set it to repeat endlessly, and made a note of the time and date. The player was not only still playing at the claimed 153-hour running time, it kept going for another nine -- just four hours short of a week.

I can hear you asking: why, in the name of all that is good and just, would anyone want to listen to six days' worth of nonstop music? Practically speaking, you wouldn't (unless you really liked Shibuya pop), but the fact that you could means that you can go for weeks without having to recharge the player, if not longer. A quick calculation revealed that with my listening habits, I could conceivably charge a B153 in May and only get around to recharging it in August.

But beyond this much-appreciated gimmick, the B153 is actually a fairly decent flash player, if a bit no-frills. Though the player reads ID3 tags, there's no searching or organizing by artist or album -- it's strictly folder navigation. And don't even think about PlaysForSure or Janus.

Available in 512 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB versions (at the entirely reasonable prices of $89, $99 and $129), the B153 is a Universal Mass Storage (UMS) device, so it's recognized as an external drive on any recent version of Windows, MacOS or Linux. Its interface is a little quirky, but I found it easy to adapt to -- especially since the little thumb joystick is so responsive. (Lefties, take note: there's an option to flip the OLED screen's display text upside down, which should make things easier for you.)

The built-in voice and line-in recorders are decent, though they only top out at 128 and 192 kbps, respectively, in the MP3 format. The audio is clear enough that every instrument on my universal test track -- Stevie Wonder's "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" -- was discernible without using any of the audio-boost or EQ functions. Activating SRS at its default setting brought a nice richness to the sound, though.

Also included and pre-installed is Podcast Ready's myPodder, which I gushed about in March (and continue to gush about -- I use it all the time, and am pleased to note that the software seems to be out of beta).

There are a few flaws: the B153 only plays MP3 and WMA (up to version 9, and I confess I did not test it with lossless), and there's no gapless playback, though gaps are small enough that you won't notice except on mixed or live CDs. The player's also a little sluggish when it comes to skipping tracks, and I'm not too keen on the non-standard USB connector. But overall this is a keeper, especially considering its price.