Pop KTV

Would have had a nice time if it wasn’t for all the smoke throughout the venue. This venue allows smoking in the private karaōke rooms, but you can still smell it in the halls and throughout the private rooms, even if yours is smoke free. I had to leave the party I was invited to after 45 minutes because I couldn’t take the smell. I’m also pregnant, so it didn’t feel like a safe environment to be breathing the air. This is a big deal because Chicago is supposed to be smoke free. Not something I should have to worry about when going out. I mentioned something to the bouncers, and they didn’t seem overly concerned with my concerns.

I would love this place 4 or 5 stars based on venue and ambiance. They have a communal room where you can sing and dance. They have a full bar. They also have private karaōke rooms which rent by the hour.
The main complaint is the sound quality in the communal area. Often times the background music is very low volume and they cannot remove the vocals to do true karaōke singing.
Besides that, it’s a fun place to go after dinner with friends for karaōke and drinks. The staff are very nice and they speak English.
The selection of English songs is sufficient enough for a Chinese karaōke bar.
I’d still go back to have a good time with friends after a dinner in Chinatown.

Whenever my friends and I go out in Chinatown for karaōke, we don’t settle for any of the private rooms. We make work and end up taking over the open lounge outside. Passerbyers and children alike, you’ve been warned.
Pop KTV is a quintessential Chinese-​Hong Kong karaōke lounge (I mean, just look at the name. KTV!) that gets the job done. The bar area in front was empty on a Saturday night, so we stretched out, owned the dance floor, and started plugging in our own songs to the bar karaōke machine.
The song selection was very minimal, and all the functions were (naturally) written in Simplified Chinese. If you can’t read it, it never hurts to ask the service how to use the machine. (Un)fortunately, all of the songs we added to the queue weren’t entirely instrumental versions. The two mic stands in the front were also very short, so it’d be difficult to move about and dance if you’re singing. But you can still drop it low.
Overall, song selection is not up to date, but has most hits you’d find from the past three decades.
Drinks here were basic for any karaōke bar. I definitely suggest pre-​gaming a but before coming, and if you’re okay with the open lounge in front, take advantage! You’ll end up singing and dancing without the need to pay more for a private space.

As a group of three, we arrived there at 2pm after having lunch in Chinatown. It was quite confusing as there was nobody in the karaōke lounge, and I had to call their service line to make sure that the place was open.
However, the place is pretty decent in general — mostly up-​to-​date (6 months old) songs, good mic, and the weekday discount was a plus.

Made a reservation weeks in advance for a big group and on arrival was told that they didn’t have room for us… Never coming back

Came here last night with a group of friends and the night was super fun until we saw the bill. BEWARE. CORONAS ARE $ 5 EACH. Without knowing this, my friends and I ordered 12 bottles and were shocked at how much our bill came out to be. On top of that, our bill only included a 2 hour session, but then all of a sudden they charged us for an extra 30 minutes. It almost felt like they were trying to take advantage of the fact we were drunk and charged us for extra time. Of course we went back and compared the time of when the receipt was printed and the current time and complained to the register. We were refunded the extra charge, but it could have easily been missed. Another factor that I didn’t like was how the karaōke machine was run in Chinese. Thankfully we had a friend who was fluent, but I can only imagine how confusing it would be for someone who wasn’t Chinese.
Although they had some major faults, the rooms were clean and they even had lights to set up the mood.

I give this place NO STAR! It seem to me that this karaōke bar only seem to know how to cater to Chinese people. If you’re not Chinese I highly suggest you not to go here. The bartenders are extremely rude, and if it was up to me I wouldn’t of left and them one dollar tip, but of course gratuity was ready included in our bill. I don’t recommend this place for anybody!!!

Came here with a group of ~18 people on a Saturday night and booked a medium sized room. Even though we reserved a room in advance, we still had to wait in the lobby where the music was WAY too loud. If you spend a minimum of $ 350 on drinks and food, the room fee is waived. The room itself was decent, however can anyone explain why it smelled like B. O? The bathrooms were also super disgusting – there was vomit in the sink.

Not really catered for English speaking people. Very limited American songs. Very nice place for Chinese speaking people. Ambiance is very nice. Pretty empty on a Saturday night.

I came here with ~20 people for my birthday, and I had a blast. It was exactly what I wanted — I’ve been to KTVs in China when I travel for work, and this place is very similar to the ones in China.
I reserved the room about a week in advance (and even then the rooms were starting to fill up). There are different sized rooms (small, medium, large, VIP) and there are no room rates, just a minimum amount you have to spend. We had a large room for 20 people, and it was $ 400 from 11 PM — 3 AM (this is the time slot they have available. Earlier one is from ~6:30 to 10PM).
For the music system, there is a touch screen computer in the corner and luckily one of our friends is Chinese and could help us, because the buttons are in Chinese. But we learned the right buttons to hit and search artists/​songs and then it was no problem.
The English music selection is great for pop hits. There were some classics that my friends were looking for and they weren’t available.
Beer is ~$ 5 and cocktails are ~$ 10. Beware of the mixed drinks, it seemed like they were over the board — either barely any alcohol or a lot of alcohol.
Another thing is our room was really hot — we had to have the door cracked for a bit to get some fresh air.
Overall, fantastic place if you have a great group of friends to drink and sing with.

I went to PopKTV on Lunar New Year Weekend with my friends. We reserved 1 month in advance for a medium room. When we got there, we had to wait half hour for our room to be ready. The manager was rude about it when we mentioned that we have been waiting for half an hour. They still charged us the full price of 4 hours. During the night, I went to the bathroom and it was disgusting, someone had puked all over the bathroom and no one cleaned. I almost puked just from being in the room. Overall, I do not think I will go there again.

I’ve only been here once on a Saturday night and all the small and medium rooms were booked so we resorted to sitting down in the lounge area.
I was really reminded of hong kong lounge bars. Beers are standard price (4 – 5 $) and mixed drinks are pricier for pilsen ($ 10 – 12) and the music is overly loud (trance, top 40, hip hop and the like) There was a very active smoke machine to add to the ambiance. The very attractive dude bartender made my 3 friends an Irish car bomb on my request. Great.
PS: Bring a good ID; you get carded twice. Once at the door and the next time at the bar.
Further details:
The smoke machine smelled like flowery toilet sanitizer and the lounger area was around 15 decibels too loud for meaningful chatter so you can only resort to drinking shots and lychee martinis. That’s fine if you want a cheesy shi shi night like going to a tiki bar with good friends but I don’t recommend it if you’re on a date.

I really liked the atmosphere they gave! The song choice was very nice because all songs are chosen from a screen instead of a karaōke book. The room had drinking games too! It was just me and two other girls. We were trying to kill sometime before leaving Chicago so we randomly came. We had to use a large room at $ 50 an hour because there was no more open rooms. They have English Japanese Chinese and Korean song choices. What I liked about the karaōke is that all songs played the actual music videos instead of the random scenic backgrounds that a lot of karaōke a use. The selection was pretty nice. A little of everything. The screen to select is in Chinese but I am pretty sure they will show you how to navigate to the English selection side. Overall a very fun way to pass the time we needed in between taking our train back home! I will come back for sure next time!

Pretty fun place, friendly staff.
Downgrade a star for lack of music selection. They had a lot of older and more obscure songs, nothing recent.

WOW! So much fun. Get the private karaōke room and prepare to have some fun. They have an extensive list of songs to chose from, and nothing beats flashing lights and tone deaf singing. The bar selection is limited, so don’t go for the drinks. Can’t wait to get a crew to head back.

There are a handful of karaōke bars in Chinatown — PopKtv is my new favorite. It’s brand new, clean, and definitely a fun place to be on a Saturday night.
The karaōke machines are top of the line, with a huge selection of English as well as international songs. We got down to some Eminem, Mariah Carey, and grooved to Brit Brit… There’s something for everyone!
If you’re looking to go on a weekend, you may want to make a reservation as the private rooms fill up quickly.

My friends and I organized a last minute karaōke meet up last night (Friday) for 9pm. We tried to book a room six hours in advance but all of the rooms were already reserved. Here’s a quick breakdown of their rooms and capacity:
Small room — 12 people
Medium room — 20 people
Large room — 25 people
VIP room — 35 people
We were a party of 11 and we had to sing in the lobby from from 9:30pm till midnight until a medium-​size room became available. There is a minimum charge of $ 15 per person in the lobby. Either order up to $ 15 worth of drinks per person or just pay the $ 15, which is a very standard price charge for Chinatown. The lobby was very spacious with black leather couches and flashing neon, disco lights. People were courteous in taking turns to sing and servers were very helpful.
A room finally opened up at 12am and we immediately switched over. It is $ 48 per hour but the rate increases after 2am. There is no minimum charge other than the room rate. You are not obligated to order any food and drinks. We tried the lamb skewers, beef skewers, grilled squid, lychee juice, mango juice, and a variety of beer. The lamb and beef skewers tasted good, but the texture was very ground-​meat-​like and the cumin smell was a bit unusual. I was glad we only ordered a few to try. The lychee juice and mango juice can be ordered in pitchers at $ 12 each. Each pitcher was 50% ice but they were good with the lychee juice being sweeter. With the two-​hour stay, drinks, and food, we each paid approximately $ 25. The room is also very spacious and can easily fit 20 people with plenty more space to go around.
Furthermore, they only have two unisex bathrooms towards the back. They are also very spacious but there is always a line! They weren’t too busy last night but imagine if the place was packed. You would never make it through the line before your bladder explodes! The bathrooms are obviously very new but not a bit clean. Towels were rolled out of their dispensers and left laying on the floor in a wet puddle and the garbage cans were spilling over. I hope the Richland Center has more bathrooms elsewhere in the building…
In conclusion, our group had a pleasant time. We stayed from 9:30pm to 2am and more people were arriving as we were leaving. I’m certain we will revisit but I also believe Pop’s quality will decline in a few months since this is still their opening month. Better make use of it now before that happens!