Saregama Carvaan Premium Portable Digital Music Player (Royal Blue)

Product Information

The Carvaan range of speakers includes the Saregama Carvaan and Carvaan Gold, which offer a variety of content and connectivity options. 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. Geetmala is another treat for old timers, who remember the first ever weekly countdown show of India. You get all 50 year worth of annual show of this!! 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. Now the biggest upgrade on this Musicbar compared to the previous model is the Karaoke function, which uses these two mics included in the box. Saregama also includes four Duracell AA batteries, two for each mic. The mics themselves connect to the soundbar automatically once you hit the mic button on the soundbar and turn on the mics.

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.

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. 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. A remote would have added more ease to the unit. I know it is not included to give it a retro look, but think about it. This unit is trying to cater for both older as well as new generation. The older generation wants a radio like feel, and songs from their era. The newer generation wants to play their own songs with more control using bluetooth and pen drive. Now, you have these options, but newer generation also don’t want to walk to the unit to skip the current song. So, while people will love it for retro radio effect but find it little difficult for playing songs on pen drive and always has to walk to the unit for skipping a song. This is not an issue while playing via Bluetooth, as full control is in mobile. And on top of everything else, this is perfect gift for parents and friends. I have been struggling to give similar experience to my mother since long. I took pain to collect 1450 songs and created various folders categorizing them into whatever category I can think of. I bought five different Bluetooth speakers to finally got one which can allow you to change folders. But that is very basic, and still complicated to use. Now, with this, it will be much easier and simpler to listen to these songs. The Saregama Carvaan 2.0 comes with a rechargeable battery that promises 5-6 hours of use on a single charge, along with external connectivity through Bluetooth, USB, Aux In, and FM/AM radio. The Wi-Fi audio stations are maintained by Saregama itself, and are currently free to access with the speaker.

SAREGAMA CARVAAN is a unique product for music lovers. This is your personal radio with 80 different stations tailor-made for only you. This has a digital music player where you can play your music from pen drive, or a memory card using card reader. This is a Bluetooth speaker where you can connect your devices like phone, laptop etc. and play your music via Bluetooth. This is your FM radio as well. And as cherry on top, it has 50 years of Geetmala top songs with Ameen Sayani’s famous voiceover!!! Let’s review this in detail. Saregama gave us some interesting insights into the usage of the Carvaan range. Apart from offline sales outnumbering online sales, Saregama also has a dealer network across the country to make its Carvaan range available in over 400 cities across India. The product is naturally successful with older users, and has largely relied on word-of-mouth to improve its reach. 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. So, here is my verdict about the device. It is a perfect family music system for today’s day. I know people have moved on to their individual mobiles and headphones for playing music now a days. But that is the gap it is ready to fill. You have a Bluetooth speaker, which can be connected easily by any mobile phone in your family. They can customise their own playlist on their mobile, and play it for the entire family. A birthday or similar occasion in family, and it is fun to do as well. 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.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. You also have presets for when you’re using the soundbar to watch movies, so if you are, for instance, watching action movies, the extra bass should help give you that thumping sound effect for explosions and such. 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'. The Musicbar Karaoke has a very sharply V-shaped sound signature with recessed modes, but sounds really fun for any kind of music that thrives on bass. Clarity does suffer as you turn the volume higher, but even at around 50% volume, the soundbar should easily full most reasonably-sized rooms. 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.