Karaoke is a divisive pastime. For every one person who loves nothing more than to grab a mic and belt out some tunes in a room full of strangers, there are more who would rather suffer an unimaginable torture than subject themselves to a karaoke bar – whether on stage or in the audience.
These days, though, you don’t have to go to a bar to express your karaoke ambitions. Nor do you have to invest in an actual karaoke machine to do it; all you need is a smartphone, a music app and the Lenco bluetooth karaoke microphone.
The Lenco BMC 090PK is a microphone and bluetooth speaker all in one. With your smartphone in one hand and the microphone in the other, you can turn your run-of-the-mill party into a full-on karaoke session.
Or, as happened during the course of this review, turn the kitchen into a noisy session, courtesy of two kids under 10, an Apple Music app, and the back catalogue of Lewis Capaldi, George Ezra and the cast recording of Matilda the Musical.
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Setting up the microphone is simple: you can connect it to your smartphone over bluetooth and play your music through the built-in speaker while you sing the lyrics over the top of it. This is where Apple Music’s karaoke mode comes into its own here, providing you with a backing track and rolling lyrics. It even has a holder for your phone, so you can have the lyrics right in front of you as you sing.
The controls are all built in too. On the front of the microphone, you have a panel with a slider for the microphone’s volume, and one that controls the volume of the master track to which you are singing. A third gives you an increasing echo effect on your vocals, depending on how much or how little you like it.
In fact, the hardest part of the whole thing was actually holding on to it. Within 10 minutes of the Lenco mic being opened, it had been commandeered by the younger members of the household, who have now built their own playlist of tracks for a karaoke session.
You don’t have to have a music streaming app to source music from either; the microphone comes with a microSD slot that will take a memory card, and a USB port that you can use to connect a USB stick full of your favourite tracks directly to the mic. You can access the external storage mode by pressing the power button. The USB storage tops out at 64GB capacity, but that should give you plenty of song options.
The built-in speaker may look small, but it can pound out the volume. Team it with an over-enthusiastic singer and it can be ear-splitting – at least in my experience. I have a headache that won’t shift, for which I’m laying the blame at the feet of Lenco. The sound quality isn’t bad either. It won’t rival a high-quality speaker, but that has to be offset against the convenience of carrying around your own mini karaoke system in your bag.
You can connect it to a hi-fi too – if you have one of those – through the included cable in the box and the “auxiliary out” connection.
The rechargeable battery lasts about eight hours on a full charge, which should get you through a long singing session or two, as long as you stick to lower volumes.
There are some hidden extras. The microphone has a magic voice mode, that changes your voice to one of four effects, ranging from super deep to comically high. Plus the speaker itself has lighting effects, cycling through different-coloured lights as you sing. Both effects can be disabled if they are a little bit too much.
Good
Compact and easy to use, the Lenco mic has a decent volume and will liven up your party. It is available a couple of different colours, though the metallic pink was a hit here.
The eight-hour battery life is decent, although volume and using the LED effects will hit that.
Bad
While the volume is good, you get a bit of distortion at higher volumes. It’s easy to accidentally flip the volume too high, too. Cycling through the modes can be a bit finicky at times, especially when you are using the multifunction-mode button that also doubles as the power button.
Everything else
You have different options for audio sources, including removable storage media. All the cables have been included in the box too, but the microphone uses the older micro USB cable, so now is a good time to hunt down a few spares.
Verdict
A fun, easy way to turn every night into karaoke night – provided that is what you are into.
