Auckland Karaoke Bar Review

It's been a while since the last Auckland karaoke bar review and a lot of things have changed, so we're about due for an update.

Seong Oh

This karaoke bar is the best option if you live in the North Shore, since it's the only one around. It used to be the unofficial gathering spot for intellectuals and cultured individuals alike, but has recently fallen into dilapidation due to a change in their machines. Prior to the change we were to be able to consume a wide variety of songs from obscure vocaloid songs to One Ok Rock, but the song selection has drastically plummeted following the change. Now only popular K-Pop songs are available. The available songs can be searched on the machine manufacturer's website.

It pains me immeasurably to say that the days of Seong are officially over and that they can no longer be recommended 😢.

Oh and it's called Seong Oh because it might be the owner's name.

Ace KTV Karaoke Bar

Ace is probably the most recent karaoke bar to open in Auckland CBD. However, despite its name, Ace really ain't the ace of Auckland karaoke bars. Even though its interior is the most modern, their machines don't really have that many songs besides the typcial Chinese songs. The rooms also are quite small compared to the other options in the CBD. On top of that, parking is not trivial since Ace is located on the side of a main road very close to the city center, so street parking won't be available. You'll most likely have to shell out some extra dollarydoos to my boi Wilson.

Jinzun Karaoke

Jinzun has always been the median of karaoke bars in Auckland throughout history. Their song selection isn't anything impressive, but it's not exactly bad either - theres's enough Chinese and Japanese songs to keep everyone entertained through happy hour, but they won't have any obscure titles that you'd really want to sing. The food also strikes the balance between not being that tasty but not too bad either. Their rooms are usually not that big, but enough to just big enough to fit the crowd. All in all, a solid and stable pick. You can't go wrong with Jinzun.

Coin Singing Booth

The best option for casual karaoke enjoyers, since unlike the other karaoke places which charge by the hour, Coin charges by the number of songs you sing. This means there's no obligation to stay for a fixed amount of time, and you can just go in for a song if you happen to walk past it. However, the machines don't have any interesting songs and the space is very cramped.

Tanghui Karaoke Bar & Restaurant

A true staple in every routine. Tanghui has by far the most flexilibity when it comes to song choices, since their machines allow you to queue YouTube videos. However, from our experiments, only videos that are tagged with #karaoke will be displayed in the search results. While this is restrictive, it means that you should be able to tailor the song selection by uploading any desired media to YouTube yourself and tagging it with the #karaoke hashtag. As an example, here's the channel we've created to curate the songs we wanted to sing. Note how all of the videos have the special producer tag OKFROGBAPPYHOUR appended to the end of the video title. This was done so we could just search that term in the console and have the entire catalogue show up, ready to be selected to sing.

Oh and their food is also not bad, I recommend the dry fried cow river dish 👍