The controls themselves are stiff, and this turns out to be a good thing, providing positive feedback with a firm click when you push a button. Since there are very few controls—a Menu button and hold button on the left side of the case, and a round four-way controller with a raised center button on the right—each control serves multiple purposes; in fact, the only single-purpose item on the Cube is the plastic loop which serves as a lanyard hook.
The included headphones double as radio antenna and carrying cord for the Cube. They're comfortable, if a bit large for my ears, and their sound reproduction is adequate for their size. Given their triple duties as part of the entire package, and given the small size of the player, it may not be feasible to replace them. While the DAH-1500i only weighs 18 grams, it is heavy enough to pull earphones from your ears—hence, their integration into a necklace/lanyard, where the Cube's weight is supported by your neck, not your ears. If you do use a different pair of headphones or earbuds, be sure to wear a shirt with pockets.
The Cube achieves its small size in a couple of ways. The first is through the use of a folded circuit board. The second is the elimination of a standard USB port and separate power jack—the Cube's headphone jack doubles as the USB port, and the player gets its charge over USB. While this is ingenious, it does mean that you can't listen to music while the player is recharging or connected to your computer. It also means that you'll need to connect the Cube's included USB cable to a USB port on the back of your computer: Case-front ports and hubs will probably cause errors when your PC tries to discover the device.
Once connected, your PC will see the Cube as an external hard drive. Copying music files (or any other data) is as simple as dragging and dropping. The Cube will mount as an external hard drive on a Macintosh as well, although you'll need a Windows PC to take full advantage of the player's upgradeable firmware.
I had only a few difficulties with the DAH-1500i. First, its greatest asset can at times be its greatest liability: The player is so small that it's almost too small. One of the reasons I appreciated the solid click of the buttons is that my finger was too large to allow me to see what I was doing. Second, when you're navigating the file hierarchy looking for a specific file to play, holding down the menu button will activate a “Play All” mode. While this is spelled out in the documentation, it might be nice if a future revision of the firmware required some sort of confirmation from the user before taking this action, as it's easy to slip over the line between just pressing a button and holding it. Finally, the documentation is unclear at times about when to press a control and when to hold, and given the multiple tasks that each control is asked to perform in different contexts, it is vital to know the difference.
The problems I had with the Cube were truly minor, though, in comparison to what the product itself delivers: a solid, well-built audio player that packs an incredible number of features into a tiny, tiny package. Like its highest-profile competitor, the iPod Shuffle, the DAH-1500i provides 10-hour battery life and 512MB or 1GB memory capacities; to that, it adds a 5-band equalizer, SRS WOW surround and bass enhancement, FM radio, recording capability, and a bright, crisp blue OLED display. If you are in the market for a flash-based audio player, there is absolutely no reason not to choose the Cube.
Older models of the Cube, the DAH-1500 and DAH-1500S, are available outside the U.S., but do not have the same feature set as the DAH-1500i; they lack USB-2.0 capability, the ability to play WMA DRM, and the ability to create voice recordings. The mobiBLU DAH-1500i is currently available only at walmart.com.
mobiBLU; $99.72 for the 512 MB model, $129.72 for the 1GB model (available only at Wal-Mart.com; http://www.mobibluamerica.com.