he Griffin iKaraoke is the smallest karaoke machine I’ve ever seen, and teeny gadgets sure do turn heads around here–especially when related to MP3 players. But when it comes to karaoke, smaller does not equal better. The iKaraoke is sleek, relatively inexpensive ($49.99), and easy to use, but it completely fails as a singing machine.

So do you want the good news or the bad news first? Let’s start off on a positive note. The iKaraoke offers a compact design that has a nice, high-quality feel to it. The sleek brushed metal is nice to hold, and the five-inch-long mic isn’t uncomfortably small in the hand. The mic features a few buttons (play/pause and track/menu shuttle keys), a switch (more on this in a bit), and a red LED in the form of a ring around the top portion. The LED flashes when the iKaraoke is initially activated and stays lit during song “performances.” A four-foot cable connects the mic with a small base that plugs into the bottom of any dock-connecting iPod (fourth generation and newer). A line-out port on the base lets you connect the setup to a speaker or a stereo system (you must provide the cable), or you can use the built-in FM transmitter to transmit audio to a nearby radio.

Another drawback of the Griffin iKaraoke is that you can’t adjust the microphone’s sensitivity to fine-tune the mic—for example, to balance your sound levels. Although you can connect a pair of headphones to the iKaraoke’s line-out jack to eliminate feedback problems (creating your own private karaoke session), since that jack is a true line-level output, you have no control over volume levels. On the other hand, a useful feature of the iKaraoke is the ability to use it in conjunction with a public address system: just mute the iPod’s music, via the iKaraoke configuration menu on your iPod, and only the microphone output is sent out.

Griffin did an impressive job of packing so much functionality into such a small device. However, the gain in portability is offset some by difficulties encountered in trying to get the right balance of vocals and music without feedback and by a lack of a way to adjust the microphone sensitivity. Once you do have it configured, however, it works adequately and can provide a reasonably good karaoke experience.