Introduction

1.237KB,
0m53sFor those of you interested in a little story about brand name recognition: there's a nice couple of paragraphs to be found in our previous MobiBLU review (the DAH-2000 one). Please refer to said review for some background info on what turned MobiBLU into a more notable player in the DAP market.

As for the subject at hand, the B153… well, that one has a (short) history to call its own as well. The tale started back in early-December of last year, when it became known that MobiBLU would offer the player under the "DAH-1900" name tag. MobiBLU has a whole slew full of "DAH"-named flash players, dating back to the early years of DAP pioneering when they hit the jackpot with the DAH-1000 (on a more modest scale than later on, with the DAH-1500/Cube and all). The company's marketing geniuses soon realized that such a name would seem "indistinctive" to most people - as if it were to be "your average-day DAP", so to speak - and applied the "B153" alias to it all.

What's so special about this thing then, and what does "B153" stand for anyway? Well, it's all about battery efficiency here. The "B" probably refers to "Battery", whereas the number "153" has something to do with the maximum playback time per charge.


Nowadays, it's not uncommon for any simple-profile MP3 player to offer 25 hours or more worth of battery juice per recharge cycle. Samsung's YP-Z5 recently signaled a new dawn might be upon us, combining a sleek form factor and a color screen with sufficient amounts of flash memory and a quite astounding battery life (about 35 hours per charge).

Another relatively-well-known Korean manufacturer, iriver, has always had an eye for battery performance levels. They've basically bridged the gap between the low-end, simple-profile DAP (e.g. the T20) and the more advanced stuff (like their own U10 or the aforementioned Samsung YP-Z5) without having to compromise in terms of battery efficiency - the iRiver T10 gets about 45 hours worth of energy out of one simple AA battery.

There are more companies starting to get into this whole battery efficiency thing. Panasonic seems to have shifted its focus from "keeping things extremely small" to "making things run for incredibly long". Their upcoming D.snap range (no basic memory installed - uses an SD card instead) boasts figures of about 100-130 hours per recharge cycle. We're talking about relatively compact, simple-profile yet somehow strangely-appealing MP3 players here.

This brings me back to the B153 - certainly not the most compact of flash players, nor the most spectacularly-looking object in the known universe, and its most advanced feature seems to be a rather generic kind of OLED screen. Looks can be deceiving; if we were forced to classify this thing into a category of women, then the B153 would probably end up in the "Helga" range: strong arms + firm behind, built to last and always willing to put some healthy-tasting sauerkraut onto the table. Theoretically, it can play for about 153 hours continuously before requiring a quick pit-stop at the nearest USB station.

article index
page 1 - current : Introduction
page 2 : The whole battery thing
page 3 : Specifications
page 4 : Accessories
page 5 : Data transfer/management
page 6 : Design
page 7 : Screen
page 8 : Navigation
page 9 : Sound quality
page 10 : Additional features
page 11 : Battery efficiency
page 12 : Price
page 13 : Conclusion