2. MobiBlu - Now With Added "Getting Lost Down The Back Of The Couch" Features, Continued

Hooking the MobiBlu up to your computer is a simple affair, though it doesn't come with any USB ports of its own. It uses a proprietary cable that hooks up to your computer via USB as is normal for MP3 players, but plugs into the MobiBlu itself using the earphone jack which also doubles up for power and data transfer. This means that you might want to protect that cable with more care than normal, because if it gets lost, it's not as simple a matter of replacing a normal cable.

No drivers are required except for older operating systems, and the MobiBlu plugs in and plays perfectly. You'll require Windows Media Player to drop DRM protected files onto the player, but for everything else it's a simple drag-and-drop affair. We recorded relatively slow USB 2.0 transfer speeds of around 1.5 MB/second, give or take (depending on the weather, position of Jupiter in the night sky and so on) which irked us a bit, but was not an overly disastrous problem.

Once on the player itself, MP3 and WMA files will both play fine, though the sound quality with the headphones provided is nothing to shout from the rooftops about. Throw on a better quality set of headphones and things start to look up a bit, but the MobiBlu does not go above and beyond what we'd expect from MP3 players in its price range.

The MobiBlu also has a wide range of sound settings, from equalizer presets to SRS and TruBass adjustments. The player even features an FM radio tuner.

No, she doesn't come with the player...

The most significant disappointment about the MobiBlu is unfortunately one that might make or break your purchasing decision: battery life. Depending on what you're listening to and how you spread it all out, you'll be lucky to get about 10 hours of battery life, with the average being closer to a mere seven or eight hours, which is poor in comparison to other offerings on the market.

You obviously want both quality and features in an MP3 player, and the MobiBlu delivers respectably in both of those areas. However, your purchasing decision will have to come down to whether or not you want to sacrifice battery life for style and size. There's no doubting that the MobiBlu does its job and turns heads wherever it is shown, but keep it out on the road for too long and showing it off is just about all you'll be able to do with it.