04 July,2019 07:04 AM IST | | Jaison Lewis
Saregama Carvaan was a surprisingly good product when it launched. Not only did it cater to a market that was largely ignored, but it also leveraged its huge content library to give itself a significant leg-up. There is still nothing like it in the market, even today. The Carvaan 2.0 aims for even more greatness as it incorporates the Internet to a device meant for people who are not comfortable with it.
The 2.0 looks exactly like the older model with the exception of a WiFi button; they have two colours classic black and emerald green. Both look equally good and contrast well with the silver fittings to complement the retro styling. The tactile buttons and the knob navigation system make it an easy device to use even for people above the age of 75, which is some design achievement. There are four buttons in the front: Artists, Specials, Geetmala and WiFi.
Artists lets you select the music according to your favourite artistes, Specials group them according to actors, genres, etc, while Geetmala is the entire range of the radio show Geetmala. The WiFi button, once configured, gives the user access to a treasure trove of new content, including more classic Hindi and devotional music, podcasts and a lot more.
The 5,000 songs that the device covers are a significant portion of classic Indian music and it being offline and easily accessible is still the best feature of the Carvaan. The audio quality of the speakers, though, leaves much to be desired; it isn't the best or the loudest. But Saregama does sell a Gold Version with Harman Kardon speakers, though it is significantly more expensive.
The FM and AM radio quality and signal reception were spotty indoors but worked well near windows and in open spaces. WiFi configuration was a pain since everything has to be done through a phone and it took some time to figure out. Once configured, however, the device worked well and did not need to be tweaked again.
The content boost it provided was worth the pain, but navigating through the huge library was painful through the device interface. We found it a lot more comfortable using the Carvaan app instead.
For a device meant for older people, Carvaan does its job well and it integrates online content seamlessly after the initial configuration hiccups. If you are looking to gift something to your music-loving parents and don't want to provide constant tech support, Carvaan ticks all the right boxes.
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