» Price: $34.90 » Available: from all 7-Eleven outlets
IT LOOKS like a dice but is actually an MP3 player.
The real boast is that the Kube is designed in Singapore and made in Batam. Plus, it packs a mean audio punch.
Just slightly larger than a regular dice, Kube is the first product of a new home-grown start-up Ollo Technologies (www.ollo.sg).
I was pleasantly surprised that this one-inch cube could deliver crisp and clear music over the standard-looking bundled earpiece.
With limited real estate, Ollo had made clever use of every millimetre of space on all six sides of the Kube.
On one side is stamped the logo.
The directly opposite side is the play, pause and shuffle button.
Press once to play, again to pause and hold to shuffle the songs on your playlist.
To the right and left of the main logo face are the next track and previous track buttons, which also double up as volume control.
Press and hold the next track button to increase volume and the previous track to bring it down. Simple.
The top face contains a simple on/off switch while the bottom face has a microSD slot and a standard 3.5mm audio jack.
There is also a mini-USB port to which you connect a supplied mini-USB cable from this port to your laptop to charge the built-in battery.
Charge for an hour to get six hours of play time.
The package comes bundled with a stereo earpiece, 2GB microSD card, USB charging cable and a little USB dongle in which you can stuff the microSD card.
Do not worry about running out of space - just get a new memory card and the gizmo's capacity can be increased up to 32GB.
Put the microSD card into the dongle and then plug it into your laptop's USB port to transfer MP3 tunes.
Now, pop out the microSD card and put it into the Kube.
Press Play and you are ready to rock.
What makes the player really cool is, at a mere 18g, it can be dangled from the earpiece and worn somewhat like a pendant.
Amazingly, the whole package - with cables and all - costs just $34.90.
Considering that an average branded 4GB MP3 player will set you back over $100, this is good value for money.
Final say
No frills MP3 player with surprisingly good audio clarity.
We are proud that it is a Singapore wonder.
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.
