Saregama Carvaan Premium Portable Digital Music Player (Royal Blue)

Product Information

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. 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. 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!! 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. However, a big addition to the new product is Wi-Fi connectivity, which allows users to access over 150 audio stations, being pushed as podcasts and curated by Saregama itself. The content on these stations includes music, talk shows, devotional content, children's content, and more. The stations are regularly updated, with Saregama claiming that between 6-60 minutes of new content is added to each station every day. Saregama has plans to increase the number of stations to 1,000 in the coming months.

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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. FM work just fine, there is no antenna, but it catch most of the station without any issue and the sound is clear.

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. 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.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. Some of the finest songs selected for this unit, and a fine collection of playlist or station created for easy selection. 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. 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.