TDK Mojo 620 review: TDK Mojo 620

The TDK Mojo 620 builds upon the company's earlier MP3 CD player, adding a remote and a modern design while keeping the great antiskip protection and unique navigation system that we liked so much on the original Mojo. The TDK Mojo 620 builds upon the company's earlier MP3 CD player, adding a remote and a modern design while keeping the great antiskip protection and unique navigation system that we liked so much on the original Mojo.

Up-to-date design
TDK's earlier MP3 CD effort fell short in the looks department, but the Mojo 620 sports a cool cobalt-and-silver exterior that's more appropriate for 2002. That said, it's definitely not the most MP3 CD player we've seen, measuring 5.9 by 5.1 by 1.2 inches and weighing 9.4 ounces. However, its construction is solid, with sturdy buttons that make navigation easy. We also appreciated the fact that TDK included a clip-on in-line remote. However, the remote lacks a display, which means that you'll have to open your bag to access nonplayback functions such as EQ, random, repeat, bass boost, contrast adjustment, and so forth.

As compulsive as you want to be
While most MP3 CD players come with little or no software, the Mojo 620 bundles three novel applications for music organization and customization. The Navitrack software transforms song, artist, and genre information from your MP3s' ID3 tags into filenames. After cleaning up any missing information, you burn the resulting FIF (Field In Filename) MP3s onto a CD-R or a CD-RW. The Mojo 620 reads the resulting disc in such a way that you can browse by artist, song, or genre more efficiently than you can with other CD MP3 players. The device handles RedBook audio CDs as well.

Meanwhile, the Mojo's LyricSync software lets you import a TXT file of a song's lyrics, or you can type them into the software yourself. You do have to sync the lyrics manually, but at least TDK makes this a relatively easy though somewhat time-consuming process. Later, when you play LyricSync-enabled MP3s on the Mojo 620, the words will scroll across the LCD in time with the music. One warning: In order to save the LyricSync-enabled version of the MP3, the software and the music file must reside on the same drive.

Lastly, the Logo Editor lets you draw or import your own bitmapped black-and-white image of any file type for the device's start-up screen.

This Mojo's workin'
The $165 Mojo 620 performs beautifully, especially if you've gone to the trouble of adding lyrics and FIF info to your MP3s. Finding songs by artist, directory, genre, playlist, or title is very easy, thanks to a dedicated Nav button that toggles among these navigation options. We encountered no jolts, thanks to eight minutes of skip protection, which can be turned off to extend battery life past TDK's claims of 10 hours on two AAs. The sound, meanwhile, was superlative--rich, with an impressive dynamic range via the decent around-the-neck headphones (an AC adapter is also included). TDK claims a meager 80dB signal-to-noise ratio for the headphone output and 85dB for the line-out jack. Despite these numbers, we couldn't detect any of the hiss normally associated with such a low signal-to-noise ratio.

If the fancy song-titling, lyric-adding, and logo-editing applications don't impress you, spring for something smaller with a display on the remote, such as iRiver's SlimX. However, if you're as intrigued by the Mojo 620's special powers as we were, you'll find that your money will be well spent.