The Ikarao Break X2 Karaoke Machine Is Good for a Lot More Than Bad Singing

Design and build quality

Credit: Stephen Johnson

The Ikarao Break X2 is a party in a box: It's a portable all-in-one karaoke machine with a 10-inch Android touchscreen display, two wireless microphones that charge in the unit itself, and a speaker that outputs up to 560 watts. It looks slick, with a matte black finish and built-in disco lights that pulse in time to the sound, and it's easy to carry around thanks to a deep handle and shoulder strap.

Build-wise, the Break X2 is solid. The volume and light-control dials on the front spin with a satisfying heaviness and the buttons feel good. Nothing about the X2 seems plasticky or cheap. It feels like a rugged piece of AV equipment, not like a toy.

How well does it karaoke?

I love doing karaoke, but home karaoke machines I've used in the past have been lame. The sound is bad. The song choices are limited. They can be a pain to get working. The Break X2 solves all these problems: It's excellent at karaoke.

Sound quality: excellent

The overall quality of the Break X2 is impressive for such a compact machine. The X2 packs two woofers and two tweeters into its compact frame, and can output up to 106 decibels—more than enough sound to fill even a large room. As you'd probably expect from a small system, the bass is a little weak, even if you press the "bass boost" button, so it's not going to rival the PA at your local karaoke dive, but overall the audio is tight, clean, and more than serviceable for karaoke, casual listening, or even performing in a small space.

The sound quality from this machine's dual wireless microphones is surprisingly good for a karaoke machine, too. You can adjust the volume, bass, treble, and reverb on each microphone individually, and you can apply one of five preset audio effects to the microphones' output too. They have vague names like "original," "karaoke," and "profession," so it's hard to tell exactly what they do, but they seems to be different levels of "drench it in reverb." It would have been nice to be able to adjust these effects to dial in your personal sweet spot.

Ease of use: excellent

Credit: Stephen Johnson

Nobody wants to spend half an hour fiddling around with a bunch of settings and connections when they break out a karaoke machine; folks want to get right to butchering Harry Styles. The Break X2 gets this, and makes it easy to start singing.

At its simplest level, you turn the X2 on, connect it to a wifi network, click "YouTube" on the touchscreen, search for any song you'd like, and start singing. No hassles. There's an all-but-infinite number of karaoke tracks available on YouTube for free, so you're covered whether you want to sing a karaoke classic like Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" or something from Neutral Milk Hotel. (Pro tip: More obscure songs tend to be the original recordings with vocals stripped out, instead of vaguely cheesy karaoke versions.)

While you're singing, you can adjust vocal volume from the mic itself, and swivel the screen 360 degrees and tilt it up and down to read the lyrics from any direction. Or you can use the HDMI port and throw the words to your TV.

YouTube is only the start though. The Break X2 comes with a six-month subscription to KaraFun, or you can use Smule, Starmaker, and other Android karaoke apps. You can also pull media from a USB stick, SD card, your local network, or an HDMI device, so there's tons of flexibility. That said, the X2's touchscreen can be sluggish, so I ended up using my phone via Bluetooth for controlling playback, unless I really needed to see the lyrics on a bigger screen.

Portability: excellent

I don't know if you should bring a karaoke machine everywhere you go, but I know you could. The Break X2 weighs a little more than 14 pounds, totally manageable with either the handle or shoulder strap. Ikarao claims its 7wh battery lasts "up to eight hours." That's a little hopeful for real-world use, but the X2's battery definitely lasts as long as any reasonable karaoke session, and that's assuming you don't plug it in anywhere.

Bottom line: excellent

Overall, the karaoke features in this device are very good—so good that you'll find yourself making excuses to do karaoke. This Easter, the aunts and uncles in my family performed an impromptu version of Jesus Christ Superstar at Easter to embarrass our children; I sing "Thunder Road" while I'm doing the dishes; and I took the thing on a camping trip for an in-tent jam session. Any excuse at this point.

Break X2's other features: ridiculously good

Credit: Stephen Johnson

A karaoke machine seems like a novelty, the kind of thing you might use twice a year, but Ikarao packed so many other audio features into their machine that it transcends its main purpose. Just look at all the ports on this thing:

Credit: Stephen Johnson

Here are just some of the ways you could use these ports:

• As a guitar or mic amp. The X2 includes two 1/4" inputs you can use to plug in analog microphones, guitars, or other instruments. It's s a decent little practice amp that also plays music from your phone through bluetooth so you can play along. You could also play along with someone singing karaoke (but please don't.)

• To start a new career as a busker. Because this is portable, you could plug in a guitar, stick one of the mics on a stand and put your hat out for tips.

• To make announcements at a party. You can hit the "audio duck" button on the front of the machine, and it will temporarily mute the music any time you speak into the microphone.

• To watch videos. The Break X2 features a 2K resolution screen that you can use to watch video files either downloaded to the device or streamed from your LAN. You can't, however, watch Netflix or any other streaming service from this device. This seems to be a Netflix problem, but it's still a shame.

On the camping trip* mentioned above, we sang some karaoke, then plugged in a bass guitar and a Roland T-8 drum machine, and used a wireless mic at the same time. Did we make great music? Not at all. But it wasn't the machine's fault. It performed admirably, no clipping or overheating, and we still had enough battery power the next morning to use it as a Bluetooth speaker. It was super fun—like a karaoke machine should be.

*we were camped far from anyone else, in case you're concerned.