Like other soundbars, the Vizio MicMe is designed to sit right under your living room screen on the TV stand, where it can deliver louder, fuller sound than what you’ll normally get from your 65-inch TV. Unlike them, it pulls double duty as a full-featured karaoke speaker, allowing you to instantly turn the living room into a karaoke bar whenever there’s nothing good to watch on TV.
That’s right, it’s a soundbar that doubles as a karaoke machine, even shipping with a pair of microphones that you can use to deliver your musical stylings while singing along to whatever’s playing on TV. Sure, there’s no shortage of karaoke setups out there you can bring to the living room, but this thing lets you get one right on the same soundbar you use for your TV sound.
The Vizio MicMe looks just like any regular soundbar, consisting of a 30-inch main speaker designed to fit right under the TV and a wireless subwoofer you can set down below it on the floor. There aren’t any detail about the drivers inside the unit, but the outfit lists it as a 2.1-channel stereo soundbar, so it should offer some reasonably immersive sound for your favorite shows and movies. It supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, so it should be able to reproduce those sounds for any compatible content.
What makes it different, though, is the inclusion of two wireless mics and a matching charging dock that you can keep right next to the TV whenever you get the itch for a little karaoke. According to the outfit, all you need to do is pick up one of the mics and the soundbar will automatically switch to karaoke mode without the need to fiddle with any settings.
The Vizio MicMe can work with any karaoke app on your smart TV or any content you stream via Bluetooth from your mobile device. Just play whatever song you want to do on karaoke, grab a mic, and start belting. A companion app allows you to add voice enhancements to your vocal stylings, with six preset effects available, allowing the vocally-challenged among us to make their erstwhile unpleasant vocals sound just a little easier to hear for everyone in the party. The mics have built-in multi-color LEDs, by the way, that you can customize from the same app, allowing you to add a veritable light show to your karaoke party.
The soundbar supports Vizio’s QuickFit system, by the way, which allows you to attach it to the bottom of any compatible Vizio TV using a pair of included screws. Of course, you can just set it down on the bottom if you’re using a non-compatible panel. In case you don’t have a karaoke app to use yet, you can download MicMe Karaoke by Stingray, a free app that gives you instant access to over 85,00 songs. A cursory search on any app store should net you a decent selection of apps, too, not to mention all the karaoke options available for free on YouTube.
The Vizio MicMe is slated to ship end of November, priced at $350.