Saregama Carvaan Karaoke review: Fitting speaker if you like to sing along

 Priced at Rs 19,990, the Saregama Carvaan Karaoke is aimed at the niche market of people with interest in music. For others, it might seem leaning on the expensive side

Indian music label Saregama’s Carvaan series of portable music players is now an established brand, popular among people across generations for its timeless collection of songs. The series has been upgraded with new features several times, and the latest entrant brings karaoke features with built-in screen and about 1,000 karaoke tracks to choose from. Named Saregama Carvaan Karaoke, the music player still looks pretty, quite like the previous generation Carvaan 2.0 (review). But it has gained a little bit of weight – not too much, just a little.

Starting with the Karaoke-related features first, the Saregama Carvaan Karaoke has a built-in screen, and it comes with a pair of wireless microphones. Besides, the music player now comes with an HDMI out port, in addition to USB 2.0 and AUX-in ports. While the placement of buttons and ports remains mostly the same as in Saregama Carvaan 2.0, the top side of the Carvaan Karaoke houses its pop-up screen module, which comes out in the Karaoke mode. It is a colour screen with no support for touch operations. Nevertheless, the screen is big enough to stay readable even from a distance. It, however, lacks the brightness to stay legible in outdoors.

The screen shows information related to karaoke track collection, making it easy to browse through the catalogue and find songs of choice. Once a song is selected, the screen shows the lyrics (Hindi and English) in bold letters with a highlight function to keep you in sync with the audio track. The highlight feature is colour coded – sky blue for parts in the lyrics sung by a male voice and purple for female. Thanks to the HDMI out port, you can connect the Carvaan Karaoke with a supported screen or projector. The HDMI connection, however, only projects the lyrics on the connected screen and does not bypass audio. Speaking of the audio output, the Carvaan Karaoke’s speakers boast a good volume level but are not able to keep up well in terms of quality. The speakers are tuned for vocals which works for karaoke tracks but not otherwise. The speakers lack bass depth, and the treble is misguided.