As a complete Karaoke virgin, myself and 3 girlfriends spent a night in with the EasySing Karaoke Microphone – a neat and compact Karaoke machine that comes with 2 professional microphones (one wired, one wireless) 200 pre-loaded songs, a song binder, carry case and USB cables.

With some trepidation (and a health warning issued to anyone within earshot), we started our little sing song. After a fairly quiet start, we all found ourselves browsing the well ranging song list to find something we could sing next – or get someone else to sing. Due to a second wireless microphone, duets were also an option.

The EasySing plugs straight into the TV and has lyrics already built in. It was so simple, even I could do it! (Well, after working out which remote I needed to get the TV onto the AC channel) and on the whole, the setup and operation of the EasySing was very, well, “Easy”. Song selection is done by keying in numbers listed in the accompanying song list (which comes in a neat binder). After a couple of seconds, the intro starts and lyrics appear on the bottom of the screen, with a countdown showing when the song starts. If you knew the song, it was fairly easy to follow, and you also had the help of a ‘pitch’ scale shown on the TV screen. However, reading the lyrics got a little confusing as they appear on a 2 line display on the bottom of the screen, but with each new line appearing alternately over or above of the line you are currently singing. (After a few glasses of wine, this was even more troublesome). Perhaps it’s just because we’re not used to Karaoke, but it would have made much more sense to us for the words to follow below the last line, not above.

With the iFun feature, you can actually see how out of tune you are as your pitch is matched against the song and displayed as a coloured bar on screen. It also allows you to score your singing ability against that of your friends which makes for a fun competition. (It even has a ‘pro’ setting for those who take their singing seriously – needless to say, we didn’t use it!)

For those with some confidence and talent when it comes to singing, you can also record your efforts and play them back – also easy to do with one button operation, but beware of the horrifying results of listening to your own singing!

You can add to the 200 pre-programmed songs by ordering expansion packs from the EasySing website. A chip module is then posted to you which plugs in the microphone with an accompanying song list for the song binder.

In addition you can apparently add your own songs, videos, photos and MP3’s after first downloading some free software from the website. However, I completely failed to find the “Full instructions” when I “just click(ed) here” and was unsuccessful in trying to sort it out on my own, so I have not managed to do this. This was disappointing as there is 1 GB of memory and I wanted to try this out.

The sound quality of the backing tracks was, to say the least, poor. It sounded like the piped musak you get in shopping malls or lifts. We also had a few quibbles about the actual lyrics themselves (perhaps a little mis-translation happening?). Also, it seemed that the timing was out on some tracks too – but again, this could be down to the amount of wine being consumed. One final niggle was the fact that the choice of background screen shots was very limited and, to be honest, pretty naff. Singing along to Dirrty by Christina A with shots of little tweeting birdies and pictures of plants doesn’t quite cut it!

At a hefty £250, we all thought the EasySing was overpriced (although it was available at the time of writing, at a launch price of £199.95). We are, however, mere novices and none of us had done any Karaoke beforehand. Therefore, for those professionals out there, you might find this a reasonable price to pay for the functionality of the dual microphones and the ability to customise to your own set.

Towards the end of the evening, there were several hearty renditions of some rather famous power ballads (which apparently didn’t go down too well with the adjoining neighbours at 12.30am). Nonetheless, we 4 girls all agreed that it was a fab and fun night – promising that we must all do this again very soon.

You can get further info and order online from EasySing.

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