What's just slightly bigger than a caramel, lets you rock out to radio hits or 1GB of your favorite music, can make its own recordings, and is available at Wal-Mart? The bite-size, full-featured MobiBLU DAH-1500i is billed as the "world's smallest" digital audio player, and we're pretty sure that's true—for now, at least. And it does a lot more than just play MP3s. We're so impressed with the DAH-1500i that while we were testing it, our iPod shuffle started whining and giving us puppy-dog eyes.

The DAH-1500i measures just under one cubic inch and weighs a bit over half an ounce—a smidgen lighter than the iPod shuffle. The play, FF/REW, and volume buttons on the right face are arranged in the same way as those on Apple's players, and the menu and hold buttons are on the left face. The four-line organic LED (OLED) screen gives you bright blue text on black that's very readable, though the screen gets a lot of glare in direct sunlight. People with larger fingers may have a tough time with the controls, but most people in our office who tried it had no complaints.

The DAH-1500i's headphone jack is unique among players we've seen in that it doubles as a USB 2.0 port. The included charge/sync cable has a standard USB connector at one end, and at the other end is a 3.5-mm headphone-type plug with three bands instead of two. Those bands plus the lead correspond to the four USB pins, meaning that the player syncs with your PC and charges via the same jack it uses to output audio. We only wish the package included a wall plug adapter so you could charge the player when you're not near a PC.

The included earbuds have a necklace-style design that lets you wear the player around your neck without pulling directly on the earbuds. This is an appealing option for some situations, but the design makes it impossible to carry the player in your pants pocket. Swap out the headphones, though, and the problem is solved.

There isn't much room on the 1.2-inch screen, so the file navigation system is understandably bare-bones. Pressing the menu button takes you to navigation mode, where you can browse folders in a tree structure. Holding down the menu button provides access to extras, including a fairly sensitive FM tuner (with up to 20 presets), an FM/voice recorder, and various sound-enhancement options. Our biggest gripe concerning the controls is that you lock and unlock them by holding down the lock button for half a second instead of using a switch. That was fine when we were wearing the player around our neck, but when we slipped the DAH-1500i into our pocket, the controls accidentally became unlocked.

Getting around on the DAH-1500i is fairly easy, and you can load music via drag-and-drop or Windows Media Player. We like being able to delete files directly on the device as well as create a dynamic playlist, though the DAH-1500i doesn't support Windows Media Player playlists. It offers all the standard playback, shuffle, and repeat modes, and it also lets you loop a section of a recording (A-B repeat)—a handy feature for musicians and language learners.

File format support includes MP3 (up to 320 Kbps, including VBR), WMA (up to 192 Kbps), and protected WMA. The DAH-1500i is actually the second generation in this line; this model adds Windows DRM support, but only for purchased downloads, not subscription-based online services.

The player's sound quality is very good, though it doesn't have the power or accuracy of the iPod shuffle (see our article, "Shuffle's Got a Secret"). With the included earbuds, the DAH-1500i produces sufficiently deep bass (frequency response is flat, with a roll-off below about 40 Hz), strong mids, and adequate if not exceptional highs. On some tracks, using the included earbuds, we found ourselves pushing the volume all the way up on the 30-step scale, but the player maintains remarkably low distortion even when pushed to the limit. When we swapped out the included earbuds for canalphones, including the Etymotic ER6i, Shure E2c, and Ultimate Ears super.fi 3 Studio (check back for our upcoming review), the player handled all three admirably.

There are a handful of equalizer presets available, as well as a custom five-band EQ that offers quite a bit of adjustment in either direction in unusually fine increments. The DAH-1500i also offers SRS and TruBass sound enhancement; these actually liven up the sound with the included earbuds, especially if you're in a noisy environment, but for home listening with better headphones, we found it unnecessary and artificial-sounding.

The company rates the DAH-1500i's built-in rechargeable battery for 10 hours (compared with the iPod shuffle's 12-hour rated life). But our battery rundown test, which uses a real-world mix of songs encoded in a range from 128 Kbps to 320 Kbps, yielded 8.5 hours of continuous playback. Considering the device's size, this is not bad, though we should point out that the Samsung yepp YP-T7X is also rated for 10 hours but lasted just over 12 hours on the same rundown test.

Overall, we're amazed that a package so small contains so many features—and well-implemented ones, to boot—at the same price as the iPod shuffle ($129). Sure, the DAH-1500i doesn't have a cute name or quite the sonic power and accuracy of the shuffle. But it's more than adequate for its intended market, and all the extra features (not to mention a screen and freedom from proprietary software) make this the most compelling choice among the current crop of flash players. There's also a 512MB version available for $99. A note to parents with small children: Be careful—some of the 6 colors that it comes in make it look very much like candy.

Compare the MobiBLU DAH-1500i, the Apple iPod shuffle, and the Samsung yepp YP-T7X side by side in our comparison table

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