There hasn’t been a lot of activity on the smart speaker front lately, so we were fascinated to hear about these three new battery-powered Bluetooth/Wi-Fi speakers from Ikarao. Ikarao Break X1 The top-of-the-line Ikarao Break X1 boasts a 13.3-inch Android tablet that can be rotated 180 degrees to either side. The screen can display music videos or song lyrics karaoke sessions. You can connect the speaker to a big-screen TV using its HDMI port. The Break X1 ($700) looks to be a beast of a speaker, measuring 23.5 x 15 x 13.5 inches (WxDxH) and featuring 460 watts of amplification (note that Ikarao cites peak power, not watts RMS, so take that spec with a grain of salt). The amp drives a pair of 2.6-inch tweeters, with 80 watts going to a 6.5-inch onboard subwoofer. Ikarao The speaker comes with two super-cardioidal microphones (super-cardioidal means the mic rejects sound that’s not coming from directly in front of the mic, a common design for vocal mics) with batteries that are recharged when the mics are stored inside the speaker cabinet. The speaker can operate on a tabletop, or there’s a threaded mount on the bottom of the speaker’s cabinet so you can mount it to a tripod. A carry strap is also included to make the 13.2-pound speaker easier to haul around. In addition to its HDMI port, the Break X1 also has an aux-in port that you can plug a guitar in as well as aux-out to feed another amp or powered speaker. In addition to online sources, the speaker can play music stored on a USB thumb drive or a microSD card. The Ikarao Break X1 is available now at Amazon. Ikarao Break X2 Ikarao If the Break X1 is beyond your budget, you might consider the Ikarao Break X2 ($479.99). It has a smaller rotating display (10.1 inches) and a smaller amplifier that sends 300 watts of peak power to a pair of 1.2-inch tweeters and a pair of 4-inch woofers. The speaker comes with a pair of battery-powered microphones that can be docked inside the cabinet for recharging. The Break X2 has similar inputs and output (specifically, USB, AUX In/Out, HDMI, and Bluetooth V5.4), and it also has a microSD card slot. The speaker  measures 8.3 x 11.8 x 10.58 inches (HxWxD) and weighs 13.2 pounds. The Ikarao Break 2 is available now at Amazon. The Shell S1 ($370) is Ikarao’s third new Karaoke smart speaker. Its amplifier sends 20 watts each to a pair of 1-inch silk dome tweeters and 50 watts each to a pair of 3.5-inch woofers. It has the same 10.1-inch display as the Break X2, dual battery-powered mics, and most of the same I/O ports (the exception being the Shell 1 has a USB port for music playback, but no microSD card slot). It’s also now available at Amazon. Ikarao Karaoke software included All three of the new Ikarao smart karaoke speakers come with a six-month subscription to Karafun, an app and online catalog of karaoke music with sing-along lyrics that can be shown on the display or output to the respective speaker’s HDMI port. This news is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart speakers. The app, which runs on the speaker’s Android tablet, can also customize the key and the tempo of any song in Karafun’s catalog. If you know your karaoke session will be offline—on a camping trip, for example—you can download the songs you want to play to the speaker itself and operate it in offline mode. before you. And when no one is in the mood to sync, you can play an online music trivia quiz game. A subscription to Karafun Premium costs $9.99 per month. We’re expecting to receive a review sample of the Ikarao Break X1 and will post a thorough hands-on review when we do. You can read more about Ikarao’s speaker lineup at Ikarao.com. Read...

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