Customer Reviews

TDK MOJO 620 - CD / MP3 player - blue, silver

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought one of these for my sister she wanted a cd-mp3 player for her car, she connected it using the iRock audio transmitter into the headphone jack on it. It has awesome sound and the navigation on the screen is easy. After seeing what it can do my brother and I are also buying one. The little remote with it makes it even easier to change tracks and use other controls without even looking at the screen. It runs off of 2 AA batteries and it gets about 10 hours of playback time with them. I read somwhere that if you turn off the Skip Protection (40 secs for normal CDs, 8 Minutes for MP3-CDS) you can juice about 11 hours of playback out of it. You ca also connect a car adapter to it and also included in the package is a DC adapter so you can plug it into an outlet. I also tried shaking it to see if it would skip, with the mp3 cd it didn't skip at all the cd wasn't even spinning it looks like it puts the songs into its memory, but with the normal cd it stuttered a little but this extremely violent shaking. Btw, amazon.com hasn't completely filled in the info for this player at the time of this writing but I believe this is the TDK MOJO 620 CD-MP3 Player.

This... broke down the first month I had it. The most strain I placed on this thing was opening and closing the lid. It sat on my desk and worked okay for about a week. Pretty soon, I noticed the playback beginning to deminish on longer CD's. The next thing I know, everything is skipping....

MY ADVICE - Go ahead and try the Mojo 620, but make sure you can return it for a refund if it doesn't work.

I purchased the Mojo, along with competing models from Samsung and Panasonic, with the idea in mind that I'd return two and keep my favorite. (None of the stores offer an in-store demo model - all three stores offered a 30-day money-back guarantee.)
Compared with the others, the Mojo is a bit on the large size. But I was attracted mostly by the promise of good volume. (One of my intended uses is for motorcycle riding, with Koss earplugs under the helmet. But only when I'm riding the wide open spaces; NEVER in traffic. I need volume. I also need good memory buffering, to avoid any "skipping" problem.) I was also impressed by the nice multi-line scrolling backlit display, and the numerous adjustments that can be made using menus. Wow! This model also has a wired remote (inline with the earphone jack).
JVC claims 10 hours of operation from a set of (2) AA batteries. That's about the same as Samsung claims; Panasonic, on the other hand, claims 32-40 hours. (The reality is - all three are a bargain - 10 or more hours of quality tunes for a buck's worth of batteries!)
The Mojo indeed had substantially higher volume than either the Panasonic or Samsung. (In the interest of objectivity, I used the same 'phones for all 3 - the Koss "Plugs," and also a nice set of Sony over-the-ear studio phones.)
But - the JVC is going back today. Why? Because it won't play my MP3 discs!
Again, I used the same, freshly-burned CD-R discs to compare all three players. Both other models work fine. The JVC will display all the ID3 information on its excellent backlit display, but I push the PLAY button, and it's a crap-shoot. Some tracks play, others never get "acquired." It just sits there spinning. (Huh?) I took the first one back, and described the problem. The "technician" (a pimple-faced kid who I'm confident knows much less about the product than I learned in a couple hours of fiddling with it) told me I was probably burning my CDs wrong. Which might be true, if the Panasonic and Samsung didn't play 'em flawlessly. Anyway, they gave me a replacement, and it's doing the same thing.
Another thing - on the tracks that DO play, some of them "skip" from place to place in the track, back to the beginning, etc. And if they DO take off and start playing, there is some irritating "popping" introduced into the sound from time to time, that is NOT heard with the other models.
(I didn't do much testing with standard audio CDs - although the MP3s don't sound nearly as good as CDAs, in my opinion, the trade-off is 10+ hours on a disc, instead of 74 minutes. Again, portability is a big issue on my upcoming motorcycle adventure that I'm gearing up for.)
Frankly, I'm quite disappointed I didn't have better success with this JVC. (The Samsung and Panasonic both offer a 1-year factory warranty, compared with 90 days for the JVC. I purchased a 3-year "exchange" warranty at my local retailer for $18 extra, but I guess it won't matter now.)

I'm going with the Panasonic. Not nearly as feature-rich as either this JVC or the Samsung (with its awesome DISPLAY remote control!), but it's bulletproof. Or so it seems. I've also got a Panasonic portable CD player that I bought new in '97 and it's still going strong.

Other hardware notes:
Motorcycle - 2000 Harley-Davidson FXDX (pretty loud, but quiet compared with wind noise at 60+ mph).
Phones - Koss "The Plug" - like earbuds, but with a soft rubber plug that goes further into the ear canal, and supposedly blocks ambient noise. $15-17, lifetime warranty.
(This is still an experiment, and may be a colossal failure. In my few miles of "testing," the ambient noise of motorcycle riding is still a major issue. And, I'll probably end up with permanent hearing damage. Huh? Huh? Maybe if I had a Honda Gold Wing with a big fairing...... NAH!)

CD-burning - I'm using an IOmega 12x CD burner, and the standard Adaptec Easy CD Creator, Version 4. I've never had a problem with an audio CD or an MP3 collection.

As other reviewers have mentioned, sound quality is quite good...but the this discman has no longevity! After only a couple of months of minimal use and no damage caused to the unit by me, the remote control simply ceased to function. Sure, it still plays CDs, but many of the useful features, navigation, etc. are completely lost without the remote. Go for a more durable brand like Sony.

This mojo has an amazing sound and the remote is a very nice touch. It is very easy to navigate. (This is my second MP3/CD player). However, it died after only 3 months of use. So, purchase it with the extended warranty or you will be [cheated].

I was attracted to this player beacuse of the rave reviews for it's NaviTrack technology, which allows you to make playlists on the fly by Artist, Genre or Title. It delivers this, but some issues with MP3 CD's in general keep it from being a perfect implementation.

First off, the MOJO uses a proprietary FIF format (Field In Filename) to rename your MP3 files to match the ID3 Tags. One problem: It only gives you the option of Artist-Song or Artist-Song-Genre format. If you have a list of songs in Song-Artist format, you're out of luck: FIF will interpret the song name as the Artist. If you don't use the TDK software to get your MP3's FIF-compliant, it's unknown how the file will be tagged on the CD. The MOJO Player has an option on displaying the FIF or ID3 tag info, but it seems to always dispaly the FIF-detected tags (correct or not).

As for Playlists: Mojo does not support .m3u or other playlist files. It plays everything in the order it was burned on the CD-R. If you use NERO or some other popular burning software, this means alphabetic order by filename. The only way I can think of around this is to manually add a track number on all of the files, but I'm not sure what this would to to the display, and updating would get tedious for around 200 files per disc. You CAN select or deselect tracks by Artist, Title or Genre to make a Playlist on-the-fly... but it only plays these tracks --you guessed it- - in alphabetical order. Given that the disc can hold around 10 hours of music, the "A to Z" theme can get old very quickly. The Repeat-Random mode gets around the Alphabetical playlist problem to my satisfaction, but I still wish for playlist compatibility.

The hardware seems pretty solid, except for the plastic hinges on the CD door. The LCD is jam-packed with as much information as you'll ever need (EQ Presets, Title, Artist, Play Time, Tracks Played/Total Tracks, Bit Rate, and many more), and it's all on a large, easy to read display. The Remote is handy, but the cord could be longer and the headphone jack on it is tricky to get connected fully.

With a Jensen Cassette Adapter, or the included headphones, the sound output was excellent. It's wonderful to have the ability to play around 10 hours of music on one CD and one set of AA Batteries. I drove roundtrip from Atlanta to Orlando on one CD-RW of music and the batteries lasted around 9 hours. It seems a good, solid player, and I don't think you'll find a better one for [the price].