HaveFun Karaoke (SAFRA Yishun)

HaveFun at SAFRA Yishun is on the ground floor of the clubhouse on Yishun Avenue 4, and it is the best-designed room the chain runs — the one where somebody clearly thought about what singing in a group is actually like.

Each room has two large screens, one at each end, so nobody spends the evening twisted round in their seat looking over a shoulder. Songs are queued from a console at the side or from your own phone by scanning a QR code, which ends the usual scrum around one tablet. The sound system is the most praised in the chain by a distance, free-flow soft drinks come with the packages, and there is an outdoor area for stepping out of the noise, which no other branch has. It is also the chain’s busiest room by review count, which tells you the design works.

Two practical things. The front desk is the weak point and consistently so — the rooms and the sound draw praise while the welcome does not, and it comes up often enough that it is worth going in expecting brisk rather than warm. And the session timer is strict: it starts when you pay and the system stops accepting songs the moment your hour ends, so queue your last song early rather than hopefully. There is no charging point inside the rooms.