A Streaming Revolution! The Chord Electronics Poly!
/The Chord Electronics Mojo headphone amplifier and DAC was one of our favourite products to come out last year and you would be forgiven for thinking it couldn’t get any better than it already is, well the geniuses at Chord Electronics have proven us wrong and revealed the Chord Electronics Poly.
The Chord Electronics Mojo would have been hard to miss in the months following its release, five star review followed five star review as the diminutive product was received extremely positively everywhere. In case you missed the hype in brief the Mojo is a portable DAC and headphone amplifier, an easy and surprisingly affordable way of making your digital music both at home and on the move sound incredible. It always needs a physical cable plugged into one of its inputs to pass the signal, as one would expect, however Chord Electronics have completely changed this aspect by introducing the Poly.
The Poly is an add-on product for the Mojo and transforms it into a standalone streamer. Physically it looks fairly straight forward, at about half the size of the Mojo there’s no actual controls on the device as this is dealt with by the Mojo when the two connect snugly and securely together via the two micro USB ports. Once fitted together the Poly and Mojo look just like one device with only the names of the two products on the sides giving the game away that they can be separated. A very smart case is also available from Chord Electronics to protect the two devices and ensure they don’t come away from each other, useful if you are carrying them in your pocket. Once connected the two devices can be charged up together, the Poly provides a nine hour battery life after a four hour charging time.
The Poly adds to the Mojo’s already impressive bag of tricks, wireless streaming can be undertaken via, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, airplay and network connectivity as well as built in support for Roon, with all the most up to date versions and all the aerials neatly hidden away in the casing of the unit. Practically this means of course that you can use for example a smart phone purely as a controller for your music while the Poly/Mojo combo acts as the actual player and outputs through headphones on the move or a line level output to go to an amplifier at home.
One of the most clever ideas the design team had in our opinion was adding the option o fan SD card slot on the Poly, this means an unlimited collection of music can actually be stored locally and then controlled via an app from a smart phone, potentially freeing up storage space on your device, this is a hugely impressive and thoughtful feature that really adds to the versatility of the device.
The immense sound quality of the Mojo has been well documented so we won’t go into too much detail here but as the Poly is capable of handling a wide array of audio formats including High resolution files. It’s worth saying, put a high quality file through this combination and the results are mind-blowing! The Mojo, despite us listening to it dozens of times always surprises with how good it is and the Poly just gives you more options in how you listen to your music. Dynamics are crisp, detail is stunning and you hear some tracks in a different way to how you have heard them through headphones before.
Chord Electronics have always been innovators but this product is truly revolutionary, we can’t think of anything that competes, or is even similar the Mojo/Poly combination. Both items are available for demonstration in store and we highly recommend coming in for a listen.
Chord Electronics Products are available in the following stores: Brentwood, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Enfield, Manchester, Oxford, Portsmouth, Preston, Reading, Southampton, Swansea, Swindon
