As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Click the button "Affiliate Links" above to learn more about my Affiliate Disclosure.
Introduction
This is the first time I’m writing about an add-on accessory for a product that I haven’t even thorougly reviewed first on this blog :) I did get a chance to try out the Chord Mojo recently and it literally blew me away. How can a DAC / headphone amp at the size of a cigarette box sound this great? I’d even use the Chord Mojo in a dedicated audio setup. It’s that good. I still have to find out how close it comes to my Gustard X20.
There’s just one problem with the Chord Mojo as it is: it needs a decent source. After all, the Mojo is just a DAC. Here’s exactly where the Chord Poly nicely fills the gap. It was introduced just recently at the CES 2017 and won’t be available for sale until April/May or so I’ve been told.
Before the Poly, you had to hook up your iPhone or Android device or even any music streamer which isn’t the most convenient solution in my opinion. Sure, you could hook up your Raspberry PI setup to feed the Chord Mojo (or any other music streamer such as the Auralic Aries products) but it would be nice to have a high-quality one-box solution. The Chord Poly is essentially a WIFI-enabled music streamer that plugs right into your Mojo. And it is battery-powered. Chord claims a battery life 9 hours or more. Another great benefit is that you can charge the Mojo and Poly at the same time.
The Chord Poly offers an SD card slot so it becomes easy to play back your high-resolution files. On top of that you get full Roon support! Plus there is support for DLNA, Airplay and Bluetooth. So you can basically use the Poly in any way you wish. Imagine using your Chord Mojo on-the-go and when you return back home, you plug it into your Poly for a full music server experience. These are great times to be an audiophile in 2017!
You can find out more preliminary info on Chords website:
http://www.chordelectronics.co.uk/product/poly/
How much does it cost?
Not sure how much the Poly is going to cost in the United States but Chord mentioned a target retail price of 500 GBP which is roughly 630 US$ at the current exchange rate so I’d assume the retail price is going to be around 700 US$. To me this sounds absolutely reasonable if the Poly lives up to its promise. Keep looking for it on Amazon.com (advertisement) when it hits the market.
Stay tuned for my detailed review (also including the Chord Mojo head to head against my best DACs)!
Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates.
For sure, Chord DAC’s have always represented something special. I believe they were one of the first to understand that physical “compactness” works (extremely) favorably with digital gear; as opposed to analog gear that almost always seems to benefit from large, well, large everything -LPS a key contributor.
pj
(The key component to Chord’s success comes from the brilliant mind of Rob Watts)