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Saregama Carvaan Premium Portable Digital Music Player (Royal Blue)

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The tagging of the collection also leaves a LOT to be desired. The Artists collection has several singers, but then a lot of songs are also put under names which are not the artists but rather music directors and even lyricists (eg. Javed Akhtar, Kalyanji Anandji, Shankar Jaikishen and others who really weren't singers). I guess this is only done to have a perception of a large number of artists, otherwise most songs would end up under 'Lata Mangeshkar' and 'Kishore Kumar'. For now, most of the stations centre around devotional content, as well as genre and mood-based playlists. There are also some talk shows and conversational programmes, covering topics such as cooking, finance, and health. Saregama refers to these shows as ‘podcasts', which we'd say is a fairly accurate description of what you can expect.

Apart from this, you’re also provided a remote to control various functions, an HDMI cable and a 3.5mm cable—all in the box itself. There is no AUX in port, so only way to connect your mobile to this is Bluetooth. We know Bluetooth takes more battery. So, AUX in would have increased battery life a lot. While the build quality is excellent, I had to return the product for several reasons. Returning this was a hard decision, because the thing *looks* very cool. USB implementation is very good. If the songs are spread under various folders, you can easily skip through folders using big dial. But songs on USB are played sequentially.In terms of design, the Musicbar Karaoke is a bit of an upgrade from the previous Saregama Carvaan Musicbar, because it gets these rose-gold accents on the button area, and this fake-wood trim at the ends. The subwoofer is very simply designed, with no buttons at all, but the Carvaan logo is finished in Rose Gold to match the soundbar. Bluetooth mode is very basic. It does not have microphone, so you can’t use it to take a call. Also, none of the button works in Bluetooth mode. So you can only operate it from your mobile. At least the next / previous button should have worked in Bluetooth mode.

While the core functionality that we loved hasn't gone away, the company has made the Carvaan 2.0 a little more high-tech. The Saregama Carvaan 2.0 is priced at Rs. 7,990, and works just the same as the original Carvaan speaker, along with a big new addition — Internet connectivity. This new model can use Wi-Fi to access over 150 Internet radio stations and podcasts. Does this overly complicate a product that's known for its simplicity? We've had a chance to use the Saregama Carvaan 2.0for a whileand here's our review.

The Karaoke mode on the Saregama Carvaan Karaoke works quite well

The Saregama Carvaan Karaoke has a 9-inch colour screen to display lyrics, and navigate the Karaoke interface Saregama Carvaan 2.0 will be offered in two colour options, and the Gold variant will also arrive in two colours

FM work just fine, there is no antenna, but it catch most of the station without any issue and the sound is clear. When asked if Saregama was working on a hardware product for younger audiences, Vikram Mehra - Managing Director of Saregama India - stated that it wasn't something it was working on, and that the company's focus was on providing a product for its older audiences.Battery lasted for more than 6-7 hours while playing built-in songs. It was still showing around 20-25% battery, but we decided to charge. So, battery life is great on built-in songs. I did not try Bluetooth all the way, but playing for more than an hour on Bluetooth, I didn’t see much of battery loss. So, my vote is that it has good battery. I wish they had given the specs about battery capacity in mAh. Similarly, the 'Moods' option is messed up. The moods lised in the descriptions were 'Romance, Sad, Happy, and others'. Well, the others aren't really moods - they are genres. And that too quite similar. For example, there's "Shakti" and "Spiritual", "Sufi", "Ghazal"... none of these are 'moods' as such. Even the moods aren't tagged very well - some happy songs start off on a decidedly sad note, and there's no way to skip to the 'happier' parts. The Saregama Carvaan 2.0 is, at its core, the same as the original Carvaan in functionality. There is only one significant difference between the two speakers — Wi-Fi connectivity. That makes the Carvaan 2.0 worth the additional cost, and it works well for giving users additional ready-to-listen content without much effort. It isn't clear how long Saregama will continue to offer online content for, but the company does have plans to grow its scope and raise the number of online stations to around 1,000. So, overall its very good unit, but I also have some points I would like to mention before giving my final verdict. These are not the Cons as I loved this unit, but nothing is perfect, so here are the items I wish they had given in this unit. Note that out of the 5000 'songs' in the device, many are instrumental, bhajans, aartis, classical etc.,- not all of the songs are old film songs - so if it's really the songs you are looking for you might be better off buying them from Saregama itself.

Think of this, all such playlist based on same 5000 songs, and the device can be more, much more unique in its own way. And I know for a fact that with various mp3 tags, it’s very easy to do so. For the music lovers, this has great collection of songs, and on top of that, it allows you to play FM and your own songs from USB or Bluetooth. That makes it a near perfect music system. So, according to me, this is one of must buy for any music lover, or families looking for a music system. Someone has already written this in another review, and I will also add to it. If they create an app, which can connect to this unit using Bluetooth, and control the music, they can do a lot more. Think about it, the base unit will serve to the retro liking customers, and app will serve to the new generation of music lovers. They can create their own playlist, upload it to the unit, use it for Karaoke on the instrumental section, or buy new songs directly within the app and gets uploaded to the unit. This can be another source of selling their songs. The Saregama Carvaan 2.0 and Carvaan 2.0 Gold are available to buy starting today from saregama.com, and will eventually be made available on other online and offline retailers. The company also recently launched the Rs. 3,990 Saregama Carvaan Go, which brings portability and easy on-the-go use.

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Both the soundbar and subwoofer are made of plastic, which makes them very light. The soundbar weighs just 1.6kg, while the subwoofer comes in at 4.92kg. Specification-wise, there’s four 2.5-inch speakers in the Musicbar, and one 6.5-inch driver in the subwoofer, for a total 120W of power output. This aside, there's also the ability to connect to Wi-Fi to access dynamic content curated by Saregama (somewhat aptly called podcasts) like on the Carvaan 2.0, FM and AM radio, Bluetooth, USB and Aux In, and the big new feature that gives the device its name – karaoke. As such, there's plenty by way of connectivity options, and you can choose to listen to your own music from a different source device if you want a break from the built-in content. Online content for the Saregama Carvaan 2.0 comes in the form of audio stations that work exactly the same as the preloaded artiste and genre-based playlists, except that music is streamed from the Internet. The available audio stations currently number in excess of 150, and Saregama says that more stations are being added regularly.

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