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TDK MOJO Portable CD-MP3 Digital Jukebox with 8 Minute Anti-Shock and Artist, Title, Genre, and Album Directory

TDK MOJO Portable CD-MP3 Digital Jukebox with 8 Minute Anti-Shock and Artist, Title, Genre, and Album Directory

List Price: $179.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Value For Money - Doesn't Make Any Claims It Can't Meet!
Review: I have had my Mojo for almost 2 months now, and I waited that long to write a review so that I can give a fair, accurate account of this player.

You've read about all the pros of this player: great sound, easy navigation, value for money, cool indigo display and many more. Then there are the cons: styling, battery life, CDRW compatibility, skipping, lack of remote and carrying case. I won't focus on those anymore (since they are all true) but will just comment on the features that matter to me.

CDR/CDRW Compatibility - For the record, the manual does say that the Mojo WILL NOT play CDRW formatted for packet writing. AND IT DOESNT just like the earlier reviewer mentioned. I used IN CD to do it and it failed just like the guy mentioned. I then used Nero to REFORMAT my CDRW and use that program to burn the songs and it was fine. You can't blame the Mojo...you just wish TDK put that fine print OUTSIDE THE PACKAGE to warn buyers.
So don't think you can use a CDRW like a floppy; you'll have to use a different software like Nero. NO CDRW PACKET WRITING. Period.

As for CDR types, I tested every type from the cheapest generic ones to the quality CDRs...Mojo plays them all flawlessly! I have also tested its compatibility to WRITE ONCE and MULTI SESSION CDRs...Mojo can handle them both.

DOESN'T SKIP...IT STOPS! This was the worst let down. Please note that the Mojo doesnt claim to be JOG PROOF...because it aint! MP3s will play...during jogging...but when the spin up starts for the next song, it will stop playing until you slow down. So for any exercise, its (Brisk) WALK, DON'T RUN! Sometimes it will play 2 or 3 songs during a run, but it will eventually stop between songs...When that happens, you will have to slow down and wait for it to pick up again. At worse, it will stop in the middle of a song.

AUDIO CDS - I don't know if its just my unit, but the Mojo FAILS TERRIBLY WITH SHOCK PROTECTION FOR AUDIO CDS! BE WARNED! It just comes to a grinding halt with constant jolting. I am not that disappointed since I bought this for the MP3 CDs, and in that area, the Mojo delivers acceptable shock protection.

GREAT SOUND & NAVIGATION! 2 Technical/Electronic Websites compared Mojo Vs. Rio's SP250: both commend Mojo for having better sound and easy of navigation. Thats was an important point for me. And yes, this player has LOTS OF SOUND to put out and EQUALIZATION and BASS BOOST is good. Nice headphones too,...compare that to SP250 notorious earphones (Check out the SP250 reviews). The only thing to really mention is that it does have a 2-3 second gap between songs...so you'll have to be patient.

SOFTWARE - I've used the Musicmatch software to rip CDs and its VERY EASY to use and FAST! Haven't used TDK's Navitrack since renaming the files in FIF format in Explorer was good enough to get the display I wanted on the Mojo LCD. Did I already mention its so fun to watch the display sometimes? Cute Display!

BATTERY LIFE - As the previous ones have already mentioned, GET RECHARGEABLE BATTERIES! One charge will last around 4-5 hours.

HEAD TO HEAD:

TDK MOJO vs. RIO VOLT SP250 - The latter cost more, makes you pay for a not that great FM Tuner (See reviews) and other knick knacks that aren't worth the additional cost. Technical reviews also complain about the weird navigation of the SP250. The only advantage the SP250 has is the remote and I'm not sure how the SP250 performs in shock protection.

TDK MOJO vs. HDD Players - The Mojo costs FAR LESS than those 6, 10 and 20 GB HDD Players. Not to mention, they appear to also skip anyway during jogging. (See Reviews) They are just as big and will eat up batteries twice as fast as the Mojo. I also like the fact that I simply load a CDR with 10 albums and I am off. Mojo delivers value for money!

TDK MOJO vs. 16, 32, 64, 128MB MP3 Players - Size does matter...but blank CDRs cost so much less than memory cards. Plus, if you have a home or car stereo that has an MP3 player, your MP3 CDRs can go from your Mojo to you car, house, and back! Lets see your smart media do that! And let's face it, how can you even compare the Mojo's 10 hours of music to these 2-4 hour ones?

So I rate the Mojo very well and worth your money. Biggest drawback was the skipping, but all the other features still give it an edge over the competition. 4 Stars (due to lack of remote and skipping!)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! :)

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: It's a good product but...too many flaws and annoyances...
Review: This is my second portable MP3/CD player that I've owned. My first was the RioVolt with the FM Tuner and I loved it. Unfortunately the thing couldn't deal with a fall from table height on to carpet. The cover broke off and it was a mess.

So, after that disaster, I went back looking for something good to replace it with that also had a solid design. I eventually went with this TDK Mojo.

I should say right off the bat that, this is a good product. It does everything it sets out to do and the LCD display is clear (though a bit cluttered sometimes) and the sound is good. The design is solid and the controls are, I think, easier to use than the RioVolt's annoying circle button.

Saying all that however, I have to say that this product also contains a few too many annoyances to make it a 5 star purchase.

First off, it claims it can read ID3 tags along with their own operating mode called FIF. It sounds good but unfortunately most of my mp3's that I already have burned onto CD-R are in ID3 format and, though it displays the information fine during playback, when you're going through the directories, no matter what you have the settings at, it screws up alot of the names of the files and gives you either a partial name or just a number. Very annoying if you have lots of files in a directory and you're looking for just one.

Also, and I'm not sure why they decided to do this, you can not fast forward and rewind MP3's during playback!!! That feature only works on audio CD's. This is a horrible thing if you have very long MP3's.... If I knew this ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have purchased this.

One last thing for any of you that use this with a car adapter. For some reason it seems the hole for the AC adaptor is slightly wider than the standard. It works fine if you use the AC adaptor that comes with the product. That plug fits just fine. But if you try to use another one, and so far I've tried 3 different ones other than the one included along with 2 different car adaptors, it will work...just so long as you keep it still. It just doesn't seem to fit snugly so even the slightest movement loosens the connection and the unit turns off. This is especially annoying if you're driving with the player on the passenger seat and you try to pick it up to see what track or song it's on or worse yet, if you try to skip forward or search through directories. The best thing to do is, once it starts playing, just leave it alone. Else all you'll have is major frustrations as the player keeps turning off every time it's touched.

I don't think any of these flaws are "normal" or expected. As I originally said, the player on it's own is very good. Unfortunately these horrible design problems keep it from being one of the best players out there. For anyone looking for an MP3 player, this one is a good choice from the affordability standpoint but just beware of the flaws before commiting to buying this one!

[Edited 5/6/2002] - Well....this one broke too. This time, no matter what I did, it kept telling me that the cover was still open... *sigh*....2nd MP3 player in 4 months to go bad on me. Well, I got a refund for this one and am now trying out the next generation TDK MOJO. We'll see how this one goes. It has a few extra features but alot of the complaints remain. Guess we can't get everything we want...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good value, great features
Review: Until I bought the TDK Mojo in September, I had been drooling over mp3-CD players since the first one came out. I didn't want a solid-state player, because all of the solid-state players in my price range held no more than 2 hours of music. The multi-gigabyte solid-state players are intriguing, but they were just too expensive for me; I'm not one of those people (whose reviews I always seem to read) who can afford to just keep buying the newest version of something like this as it comes out. I did a lot of research on Amazon and other sites, like mp3.com, reading reviews to decide which players to choose from. Between my two finalists (the Mojo and the Rio Volt), I eventually decided on the Mojo because it had a few features, like easier navigation and better technical support, that I wanted. It's possible that the new Rio Volt models are better than this one, but at the time, this player was superior.

I am totally satisfied with my purchase. I use it almost every day and I have never had a problem. It actually came with a decent pair of headphones (NOT earbuds, like the Rio at the time did), but I went ahead and bought a 25 dollar pair of Koss headphones. The combination gives me very satisfying sound -- and I listen to all kinds of music, from classical to pop to rock to ambient and drum & bass techno. The directory navigation is a must for me, and I like the fact that it can "create" simulated ID3 tags to display based on the way the file is named. The only CD that it won't play for me, is a CD that I made, oh, 6 years ago, so I don't think any mp3-CD player would play that CD.

I should say that the Mojo didn't come with a carrying case, and I haven't tried out the anti-skip because I am usually working (-not- working out) when I use it. This also means that I have no use for a remote control. So, I can't attest to these features (or lack thereof).

Overall, it's a great player for those of us who are on a budget and can't necessarily buy the newest-and-greatest every few months, but still demand quality.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: AWESOME!
Review: this product is awesome. I was thinking about buying the Riovolt SP90 but then I saw this on-line. I'm glad that I did see this. Now I know Rio has come out with SP250 but I personally thought that this was a better deal, I have looked at the specs and seems like the only real advantage that Rio SP250 has is that it has a integrated radio. If you're willing to shell out more money for that, go ahead because from everything I've heard, that is a good product also. But I don't need a radio especially if I can fit so many songs on one cd. Anyways, tdk mojo is awesome. i have had absolutely no problems with it and I listen to it all the time.

This thing is bundled with features. it has 8 minutes shock protection which I really need cause I'm a strange person and I dance around listening to music a lot and I can't have this thing skipping on me. I've had a few minor skipping but if you can't deal with that kind of thing, buy an mp3 player or MD player. Also, the Navitrack program is pretty cool. Being able to navigate through artist and titles and genre is pretty cool. The LCD display is also awesome cause it displays so much info and it is clear and it lights up. The sound is incredible and the headphones aren't that bad either. Sure there are better ones but these headphones are actually quite good. It comes with ac adapter, rechargable batteries...there is nothing bad to say about this than that it won't let you skip forward ten songs when navigating through your songs. kind of a pain when searching through over 100 different artists. But its nothing that you can't live with. many different options to customize player also and I've had no compatibility problems with it so far. I've thrown CD-R/RW's at it and regular audio cd's. played them all perfectly. Couldn't ask for more in a player really. if you have the money, there are like two that are better out there but are in the ... price range. For those that don't or don't want to spend so much money but wnat a good portable player, get this.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: MOJO So far so.. OK
Review: I've had the MOJO about 2 weeks now and this is my first MP3 player.
Sound quality is good (for MP3) but I found the included headphones cumbersome. Also the different equalizer modes seem to make make almost no differance with the sound no matter which mode I've chosen.
I burned thru 2 sets of batteries each with less than 5 hours of play time (its rated at 10 hours). I found if I shut off the back light for the LCD display I got closer to the 10 hour rated run time. I find the LCD display just a little small for my ageing eye sight. I've seen odd symbols appear in in the title/song listings that do no show up on any other player I've tried the same MP3 cds in...
I wish it had come with a carring case (even a basic one) and a remote control.
I do like that when a VBR MP3 is played the display changes in real (?) time to show what the bit-rate is at the moment.
Over all, I like it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Problems with mp3 and audio cd's
Review: I got a Mojo a short while ago. Initally I was very impressed with it's specs. How ever, I have had nothing but problems with it. I returned the first one because it wouldn't play half of the mp3's that I tried... it would just freeze. The second one I got seems better, but I still have alot of problems with it. I have numerous audio cd's that it either refused to play, or plays with lots of clicks, pops, and stuttering. In addition, I have been creating mp3's from my cd collection to archive, and I still have alot of mp3's that stutter and stall, or won't play at all. I have tried 2 ripping/encoding programs and 2 codecs with similar results both times. I also tried 2 brands of cdr and a cdrw.

I for one, am very dissapointed over all and I will be returning it and trying another brand (Rio??)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great little discman at a great price
Review: Another great feature that i think everyone else has left out is the MOJO's ability to play when upside down! It's also nice to buy the unit and have everything included in the package, batteries, headphones (i'm still trying to figure out how to wear them correctly), and an ac adapter. It would be nice if it came with a car adapter, but I can't really complain. My old mp3 discman would skip all the time and randomly turn itself off when in my car, and much of the time not even read the disc; so the tdk is a great leap forward as far as i'm concerned.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Does mediocre job with audio CDs
Review: I bought this player so I could listen to audio and MP3 CDs on the road. It does a fine job with MP3s, but it didn't like any of my homemade Audio CDs - it would quit playing after a few songs, or it would put gaps and clicks between songs that aren't there when the discs are played on other CD players. This didn't happen with just one or two of my CDs, but almost all of them.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great MP3 option
Review: If you're like me, and you're put off with the 64 or 128meg limitations of solid state MP3 players, and don't want to spend more than [price]for a portable player, the MOJO is the way to go. The operating system is fairly easy to use, and the 8 minute skip protection for MP3 playback is great. Of course, it's a nice bonus to also be able to play a standard CD before you've had time to rip it and burn it. I would say this is probably the best value you can get for any mp3 playback option (I got mine for [price]from Amazon). The only drawbacks are the size (can't just stick this in your side pocket like a solid state mp3 player) and the lack of a remote, which keeps this from getting a full 5 stars. How else can you take 11 hours of music along with you for under [price]though?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An excellent player at a great price!
Review: I just got my mojo in today and after 3 other mp3 players i was praying that this one just wouldnt skip while sitting on a damn desk. I got 10x more than i was hoping and i recommend this player to anyone looking for a decent mp3 cd player


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