Customer Reviews

Mojo MP3/FM Player 256MB USB with voice Recorder & Headphones

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Here are my likes and dislikes of this product.

Likes:

-Easy useability, easy to navigate through menus
-Has what appears to be a stainless steel plate on the front
-Cool blue color backlit lcd
-Expansion up to 512mb
-Sounds good with the headphones it came with
-User Manual was very detailed and easy to understand
-Very lightweight
-Came with a grey leather-like case (not sure it is leather)
-Came with a Duracell battery!! not some off brand, lol
-Software seems easy to use but I use the Windows Media Player plugin that comes with it

Dislikes:

-You have to remove the leather cover to use usb, which is odd considering they left holes for all the other buttons
-Other than the steel plating on top, overall the buttons and stuff just feel kind of chinsy/cheap. Would have liked to seen at least a thicker plastic for them, considering what you pay for these things.
-There is no cover for the sd/mmc expansion card slot. I can see where dirt will get in very easily if you don't have the leather cover on all the time.

Conclusion:

Overall I am satisfied with it, just have to see how long it lasts.

I agree with the pros and cons of the previous reviewer with just a few things to add/reiterate.

1) the USB connection cover is annoying to get off.
2) yeah, the expansion slot is wide open; they should make a cover for it. but...
3) it's expandable! that's 256 + up to 512 via SD or MMC! this feature is pretty hard to find in a player this size.
4) comes with cool text-to-voice software. converts your text files into audio files so you can study on the go.
5)sound quality good; earbuds stay in your ears.
6) very lightweight. size is also quite small and convenient.
7) i was wary of its USB 1.1 max capability, but was surprised at the speed of transfer. probably doesn't make too big of a difference at capacities this low.
8) jog dial is very convenient. in general, button placement is smart.
9) transferring software is also pretty good. uses a file-tree interface, so it's easy to locate files you want to tranfer.
10) FM reception is surprisingly excellent! 20 presets available, which is more than enough where i live.
11) you can create your own folders and as many of them as you like. this feature is usually limited in other players.
12) upgradeable firmware.
13) sleep timer.
14) plays mp3, wma, asf, adpcm, and vbr mp3!
15) macos compatible, for those of you who care. it's got an itunes plugin, but i don't know whether or not it works for windows itunes.
16)features, size, and button placement make this an excellent mp3 player for exercising with.

i've done a ton of research on flash based mp3 players, and ended up getting an iaudio cw-300 for my friend. that is also a great product, with three advantages over this one: 1) *excellent* sound quality (signal/noise. not sure what the tdk one is, so i wrote tdk but never heard back. still, it's decent enough) 2) the battery lasts well over 30 hours (compared to 12 for the MOJO) and 3) it has USB 2.0 (the difference of which, as i implied earlier, you may not even notice). one disadvantage, sorta, is the earbuds, which, although of excellent quality (i opted for the mx400 sennheisers), fall out of your ears easily and make a weird squishy/squeaky sound when you run.

this player, on the other hand, is a great bargain. you get a lot of bang for your buck with the convenience of expandibility. it's not bad looking, either. i got a forty USD MIR and sixty USD IR, making it a great bargain indeed! i've only had it for a few days, so it remains to be seen whether or not it's reliable. i'll keep you updated.

the bottom line on this player is that it has two features that most players in this price range do not:

1. expandable memory. by ading a 512M mmc / sd card, you can bring the total memory up to 768M. no players in this price range are expandable. in fact, i don't see that any newly produced players are expandable.

2. fm radio. a few other models have this, like the creative rhomba. but they dropped this feature on their new models. sometimes i simply get tired of listening to music and want to hear the news. it is very nice (indepensible for me) to have this option. the radio is quite usable.

the user interface, ergonomics are adequate. i think most mp3 players have a nice user interface so this isn't really a selling point. it has a nice display and lots of options on the player.

complaints ...

the players seems to be of pretty high quality, except as the buttons feel cheap. i wonder about the life span of these.

the unit comes w/ a case, wrist strap, and belt loop. that's great, but for me, i use this exercising so i'm never going to hold it in my hand. also, most workout clothing does not have a belt, so the belt loop is useless in this regard. i wish it would have had a belt CLIP or better yet, an armstrap.

the battery life is quoted at 12 hours. for a mix of about 40% radio and 60% mp3, it looks like i'll get around 8-10 hours life. i expected this though, it's typical to overrate battery life.

short version is that this is a nice mp3 player. Expansion slot for SD, solid construction (battery cover is a bit flimsy though) battery life is long. etc. etc.
Biggest drawback that negates all of the above is that they DRM crippled the little thing. It was so nice up until you find out you have to use TDK's proprietory UniFi software. Which unifies nothing. It "allows" you to copy mp3s from you system to it. And then they are dead. You can't copy them back, you can't transfer them to anything else. And here's the best part, Windows does not recognize the device unless you install the software.
It is all the software as well, if you merely remove the SD card you can move and copy MP3s to it via a reader and the mojo plays them fine. But obviously this doesn't work for the main flash memory. And you need the software to make it work... so unless someone reverse engineers the program, don't buy this.

This is my second MP3 player and it has almost all I was looking for in an flash player. Sound quality is high, esp. compared to my first player, though I've never tried an iPOD so can't compare it to other high end players.

Good quality headphones, clear (but not crystal clear) with a natural balanced frequency response and better than Sennheiser MX500's I also own (MX 500's have better instrument separation, more forward midrange, but a very thin midbass sounding odd).

The thin form factor easily fits in your palm. The button setup is easy to learn. The design is attractive, the metal faceplate exudes quality, though the back seems cheaper than a $210 list price would imply. It has a whole range of gee whiz features, though how often do you use them, and an FM Tuner.

3 problems: 1) Tuner reception is poor. 2) buttons would be too small for large fingers, esp. with the case that comes with it, and 3) the case blocks the mic for the sound recorder. The case is really nice looking, though it wasn't well designed in a sense for the player.

I got a great price for it, enjoy it and can recommend it if you can get a discount and don't have large fingers. Though at the list price, I'd spring a few more dollars and get an iPOD.

So many things are great about this player -- the size, the ability to expand using SD, the sound. But it is ruined by the horrible software. I am so tired of it freezing up, that I don't bother any more. I just change music on my SD card. I keep looking for a fix from TDK, but there never is one.

I was quite excited when my Mojo 256 arrived. Had no trouble loading it up with music via the TDK Unifi app or via RealOne Player. Controls are simple to figure out, and the buttons are easy to control by "feel" without having to look at them. Sound quality was great, I liked the "lock" feature for jogging around the neighborhood. However, after 1 day of use, the unit locked up right after I used the RealOne Player's "Format internal memory" feature on the unit and then loaded some songs onto it. It really looked as though the RealOne player had somehow erased the firmware on the unit, as it became completely unresponsive via USB or the LCD; the unit displayed only the battery life indicator, and could only be powered off by taking out the battery. TDK tech support told me that this is impossible as the firmware is on its own ROM chip. In any case, I'm exchanging the defective unit through Amazon with no problem. I have high hopes that the replacement will work fine, as it's a very nice player for the price.

I picked the Mojo up recently (...). With its expandability options via SD/MMC, it's no doubt a great player for the price I paid. Don't get me wrong, I like my mojo alot and don't regret buying it, but it has some drawbacks to keep in mind if you're going to pay full price for it.

Not so good:

** the 256F Mojo is actually a rebranded MPIO FL100 with a different casing, you'll find this posted in several forums (the Virgin mp3 player also falls into the same category and is also based on the FL100). What this means is that TDK doesn't actually write either the Unify software or the firmware for it. In fact, my unit has old firmware on it but I can't upgrade it because the newer firmware (9/29/03) on www.mpio.com seems to perform hardware checks to see if my mojo is branded as a TDK model or a real MPIO model and TDK hasn't posted any firmware updates. MPIO's FL100 current firmware also supports 1GB SD Cards.

** the Unify software that comes with it is a good example of poor programming. The application locks up pretty often requiring you to hard shutdown. The TDK version also doesn't work with Windows XP SP2. For that you'll need a few files from either the MPIO Yahoo Group or from www.mpio.com. I'd suggest just downloading the MPIO version of the mp3 management software called MPIO Manager, which is updated frequently and is identical in every way to the TDK version except for the abscence of the TDK logo.

this is a great player for the price. Skip pros, lemme talk about cons:

1. software, really bad. When I first used it, everything was fine. Until today, after 4 weeks of arrival, the software went crazy. Sometimes it just refuses to load mp3 files to the player. Other time it you can upload the very file! So whimsical and naughty for software. You don't buy a toy, do you?
When the UniFi software appears to be cooperative, I just write all the mp3 files as I can into player. For most of major music inventory, I resort to SD card of 512MB which always works fine as you can use a card reader to quickly edit its content and plug it in it works seamlessly with mojo unless you bother to use UniFi to transfer files with SD card ( I'll never do that ).
For this, I fear there is a serious problem of compatiblity between the software/firmware and mojo. TDK, or its OEM MPIO ought address the issue sooner or later.

2. FM qulity is almost solely dependent on the earbud connected when listening. Actually you can stretch the cable longer to increase reception. 20 preset station coupled with auto scanning is a plus for mojo.

When files are loaded, esp. into SD card, mojo never has trouble playing them. that you can count on. So, SD is a must, not only for expendable storage. Recorder is fine.

I am surprised how well it does everything. I paid $150 and was expecting mediochre performance for that money. I use it mostly for recording voice and it is very good for this and has hours of recording space and more if you add an SD card.

Only problems so far: had to cut a hole in the carrying case for the mic, no provision for an external mic, plastic case fit and look are a let down, software on PC sometimes doesn't recognise the player (shut-down and try again.)

This gadget is great-- light, cheap, upgradable, good battery life and data, voice, mp3, FM radio all in one. Hard to beat.