New Face K Box

WORST PLACE EVER! My group of friends and I were singing, doing nothing illegal! (Especially since we were put in the room closest to the front, why would anyone be doing anything illegal there?!) And as soon as our only guy in the group left the room to go to the bathroom, 2 guys who work there came in and demanded to search our purses and jackets. They did not explain why they were doing, they just went through all our things and after they finished they looked at each other and didn’t find anything! Without saying sorry or giving us an explanation, they simply just left.
DO NOT GO HERE unless you WANT to be searched and disrespected!!!

Songs were not up to date (mostly english). The menu was very difficult to maneuver and quite unorganized. Wired mic still sux.
More importantly after one hour of karaōke, there were some odd stench that smelled like leaking batteries and my friends and I thought the place was on fire. The place was evacuated and thank God we didn’t have to pay a dime. It was surely a WTF night… I am so not coming back.

Came here twice so far. My 2^nd time I requested the Pink heart room & got it. Pretty up to date songs list.

Eww. New face.

Last Christmas I gave you my heart…
Oh no, It’s that time of year again. I love the holiday but I refuse to listen to the music, which has been ingrained into every last cell in my body, over the years. I swear if I ever have a son, he would shoot out singing Feliz Navidad.
The only song I can tolerate is Last Christmas! Cause I love the 80’s!
Anyways…
The only time I’ve been to New Face K Box (say that 3 times fast) was a few years back but I swear my clothes are still drenched in cigarette smoke.
They say 2^nd hand smoke kills. I say 3^rd hand smoke kills too. I felt like a walking nicotine patch, after this place… Hey hug me! You’ll feel better!
I give an extra star because they did have some of the newer tunes, they serve snacks, and somehow we had adult drinks in our room. wink wink

The lesson I learned: Ask them to write down your start time, adjust your watch to match theirs, and go to get them (rather than wait) if there is nobody at the desk when you need to check out.
My friend and I happened to pass by it in a weekday afternoon. After knowing it’s $ 10/​hour, I suggested we try it for an hour, as we had an appointment later. I read comments before that some Karaōke places make it easy for you to go over time and charge you for it, so I did think about asking the lady at the desk to write down our start time so that we can better keep track of time. But I then decided not to do so because I thought it might seem rude like I don’t trust them (but looking back, it was naïve to assume there should be mutual trust). She didn’t tell us what our start time is, of course.
I submitted my driver’s license (I’ve never had to do that before for playing Karaōke), and we got a mini room, which looked nice. Before we even sat down, we both checked our watches for the start time. The sound system was so so, and the song selection was OK but not very updated for Chinese songs. For example, under the band of Soda Green, there were only 3 songs listed. Also, you were not supposed to change the volume on the machine.
10 minutes before reaching 1 hour after we entered the room, we came out to check out. There was nobody at the desk. We waited a while, and said Hello several times but nobody answered. When I was half way down the corridor to get somebody, the lady showed up. We returned the mics, and she charged us for $ 13. I asked what the extra $ 3 was for. She said we were 5 minutes late. They charge for every 15 minutes, and this extra $ 2.50 is rounded to $ 3. (It’s my first time to hear that the business automatically rounds up your bill). Although I was sure we weren’t out of the 1 hour limit (even after spending some time waiting for her to show up to check out), we didn’t have proof on when we started either.
When we entered it, I was excited to try out a Karaōke in town and to introduce it to my friend, who is not very familiar with the Asian style Karaōke. But that experience was so disappointing. $ 13 is not much at all, but what annoyed us is their business attitude/​philosophy. We both have the impression that they do NOT expect returning customers and therefore try to get as much as possible out of each current customer (whose driver’s license they hold on to, which indicates they are well prepared for disputes).
I will not visit it again, and will tell all my friends to avoid it. But if you have to, don’t be afraid of being rude to ask them to clearly write down your start time (and adjust your watch accordingly), as they obviously don’t think it rude to have to hold on to your driver’s license during your stay there.

Came here last night at around 11pm. Apparently the minimum amount of time you can reserve is three hours, which I think is way too long. Also the hourly rate was very expensive, about $ 36 an hour for a room that held six people.
I’ve only been to a karaōke venue twice before and I was not that impressed by this place. I was disappointed because my group had difficulty working the machine and the directions were not clear. We had to ask a worker multiple times to help us.
Despite these issues the venue was very trendy. I liked how each room had a different theme and design. Also, the songs were up to date and they had a lot of English songs.

I was so excited about this place when it first opened because I thought, yay! A karaōke place in the Sunset! Fucken awesome! Right??? No, it wasn’t awesome at all.
Came here on a Friday night so I knew we missed the happy hour price already. The décor is so awesome and cool and they even have mini rooms (in addition to a small), which was the room my friend and I got. Got a real kick out of the cool room, but it was sooo difficult to navigate the karaōke menu to actually pick songs because it was all in Chinese. I can read some Chinese so it helped, but we kind of expected them have a more user friendly English menu (hey, lots of non-​Chinese people go to Chinese karaōke places now).
Anyway, the old lady in the front was trying to help us, I guess, but she kept barging in every time she heard our volume go up and start to screech because they set their stupid ass volume and shit all messed up. Then she started blaming us for adjusting the controls! We didn’t touch anything! After an hour, the old hag came in and asked us if we were done yet because they had a wait. Um… yeah…it’s not like she wasn’t going to charge us for the time we were there. We were paying too.
So we left to pay and this old dude is just smoking INSIDE. Gross and isn’t that shit illegal? Anyway, they have a 15% gratuity charge for customers who order food and drinks but it also says they can choose to charge you for it after a certain time, even if you hadn’t ordered food or drinks. The old hag thought I spoke only mandarin so she told the old guy in Cantonese, «charge them if you feel like it.» WTF?
Don’t come to this rip off place. There’s a better karaōke place higher up on Taraval that I heard doesn’t rip people off and have friendly service. If you actually like coming to this rip off shit hole, then I’m sorry, but you are a stupid ass.

this place has everything that will ruin your karaōke experience. First off, it’s run by asian gangstas who ignore you and smoke cigarettes indoors. It may be legal to smoke indoors in China, but the smoking ban passed nearly a decade ago in the US… get with the program! Towards the end, our karaōke remote broke and I asked several workers to help me, but they just puffed on their cigarettes and acted like they were too cool to work there or something. The only upside to all this second hand smoke is that my friend smoked weed in the bathroom and nobody noticed ;)
This place is also double the price of Voiz, the karaōke place up the block. We payed around $ 60 to use the room for an hour, even though the remote was broken. As a result, we were stuck in the Chinese songs section and none of us can even read chinese! So useless!
When the karaōke place closed at two, the worker made us go through this back alley way to leave. There were mice running around and I screamed and kicked over a bunch of cardboard boxes because the alley was so narrow! My friends hurried me to our car because you never know what those chinese gangstas are going to do to you if you cause trouble on their turf!

I have to update my prior review. I usually go to Voiz and tried to go around the Holidays in the daytime with a friend (yes, we love to KTV and sometimes just go with the two of us), and tried to call Voiz and they were full. So we headed a few blocks over to New Face K Box and decided to give it another go. We were looking for a Small Room for the two of us (forgot to mention Mini Room, but there were people in there anyway). The woman said the small rooms were all full, but we could use a medium (i think it was medium) room in the meantime. The room was HUGE! especially for the two of us. The room could fit 15+ people in there. The sound was really good with large speakers. We just weren’t so used to the remote and the song picking so it took us awhile to get a queue going. The backing tracks were good, and actually sounded like the real voices, not like the issues we had previously where the voices were super deep whether it was a man or a woman (as if the voices were slowed down, then sped back up to regular speed again). Since the room was not what we would usually get, I do have to reserve some stars for another time when we get the right size room. A busier day can also tell more about the business. Previously the woman would come in a little before the time you said you would be done to tell you the next party had arrived, versus Voiz which just lets you sing till whenever.
Voiz — hard to get room, but can keep singing
New Face — easier to get room, but get interrupted
…and it smells like smoke in there…
Almost 4 star, but not quite sure if they deserve a two-​star jump from me yet.

Even though they don’t serve food here, the first thing you notice at this place is the SMELL. And it isn’t a good one.
When you first walk in, it usually smells like cigarettes, because the girl working behind the counter likes to smoke between makeout sessions with her girlfriend. Right behind the counter.
Then when you walk into a room, it smells like a porn shop. Dirty, sweaty, nasty smell that they don’t even try to cover. There is absolutely no ventilation. Believe me, you need some air in these sound proof rooms, especially if there are more than four people.
You spend the first hour figuring out the remote system. Like it isn’t expensive enough already, your first hour is pretty much wasted.
You’ll save yourself a lot of time and trouble if you just have a party at home, turn the music up really loudly and sing. Or buy Singstar.

Was going to give 4 stars at first because I remember the cool décor and new selection of songs, like all the ladies throw their hands in the air by Beyonce, Circus, Neyo, etc.
Then I remembered the cigarette smoke and the machine not working for about the 1^st 30 minutes. My friends paid since I didn’t sing so I don’t know about the prices. Looking at the prices from other Unilocalers I hope my friends didn’t get ripped off.
By the way, if a place charges weird fees it’s probably cause they are either greedy, or the workers are pocketing the extra money. So please check your bills and argue. Say why is there tax on kereoki, why are you charging me gratuity, why are their drink orders when I drank nothing here.

I was very excited to karaōke last night. The last time I karaoked was years ago. My friend decided this place, and since I’ve not been here, I went along with their decision. When I stepped into this place, it reminded me of Asia. SMELL OF CIGARETTES. Yuck! So we checked out our rooms for 2 hours.
The room’s décor is modern, but the room smells moist/​mold ish. Plenty of space for big party. We fit 11 people in this room. I was surprised how new their song selections were. They had poker face, just dance, circus, most of the current hits. Working w/​the machine was a bitch though. It was very not user-​friendly. I was trying to look for English singers, there was no option for that. There were singers in other languages, wtf and we are in the AMERICA. I brushed it off and browsed songs thru new songs, hit list and randomly select songs title by alphabet. After looking at this thing for a while, I get so dizzy. Their system is decent.
So we sang and sang the night away. We stepped in around 7:58PM and returned to the front desk at 10:00PM. The bill came out to be $ 85 dollars. It was a lot more than what we all had expected. 8−9PM would be 21 dollars 9−10PM would be 41 dollars. We were expecting 60s ish. That lady in the front charged us 2 minutes over. She said if you’re over 2 minutes, we have to charge you 15 minutes (additional $ 10) for that two ****ing minutes. I was shocked. Come on now, even Asia is lenient on that. We couldn’t believe it. So that comes up to be $ 72 and some tax shiet. I never heard of tax for karaōke. I’m not coming back to this place because the way they run their business is so shady. They didn’t even warn us about extra 2 minutes or even 1 will be charge at a price of 15 minutes over.

When you first walk in here, the only thing you can smell are CIGARETTES.
After going to Voiz to try to get a room, couldn’t, it was packed. We got a room within 10minutes of getting there, that’s if we would only sing for 2hrs max, apparently everyone makes reservations to go sing K. After walking in we didn’t know how to use the menu, it was in Chinese. With our limited ability to read
Chinese, we promptly pressed the service button. The lady then changed it to English for us. After another minute of going to the first page of the artist list, we decided to leave.
You would think they would either charge us by the hour or nothing at all. They said they charge for every 15minutes, so we payed the $ 4 and left. We didn’t sing, we didn’t do anything, just wasted our time.
I guess we’d come back with someone that has a little more experience with k-​ing.

One star for their decoration. and one star for allowing you to have drinks… But minus three stars for the long wait and employees that look like gangsters.
Dint get me wrong. the place is not that bad. and the employees are not bad people. It’s just that the place can be better run. When the place gets crowded… things get a bit out of hand. One time, we made reservations, and our room got given away because another group came in and pretended to be us. They didn’t even ask for verification!
Totally ruined the night and my friend’s birthday.
The VIP is the only nice room they have. It allows you to sit a large party. However. I believe this place is starting to show its age with stains on their furniture… But the bathroom is surprisingly clean…
There aren’t too many choices for singing K… so I guess it doesn’t matter. they will not run out of business and they will continue to charge their very high prices.

I have never been to a more ghetto, overpriced karaōke bar in my life. During the first couple of songs, the system would just shut off. We told the workers and they just rebooted the screen, which runs on Microsoft Windows, so that’s probably why it sucks so bad. We had to re-​enter all our selections like 2 times, which is horrible when you have like 10+ songs that was inputted.
Although they had a good selection of Chinese music, they had a HORRIBLE selection of English music. When you scroll through the digital list, there are no artist names — just song names — so you have no idea which song you’ll be singing. Imagine selecting «Miss Independent» by Né-​Yo to show off your R&B skillz and much to your surprise having Kelly Clarkson’s song of the same title start playing in all its *.midi-​file, ringtone-​sounding glory. Try to guess which version of «Angel» you just selected — it could be the version sung by Dave Matthews Band, Sarah McLachlan, Shaggy, Aerosmith, Jack Johnson, Leona Lewis, Robbie Williams, Natasha Bedingfield, Amanda Perez, or maybe none of the above. Good luck.
The worst, though, is their pricing. This place is perhaps the sole reason why there’s a stereotype that Chinese people are greedy and shady. A group of 5 of us were in a small-​ass room (that barely fit us 5) and we sang for exactly an hour (which included a load of system reboots and songs getting cut off). We didn’t order any drinks, because they were way too expensive. And our bill came out to $ 76.00! WTF is that crap. When you walk in it says that it’s $ 45/​hr (which is already damn expensive), but they automatically add a 20% gratuity charge (even though they didn’t do shit except for rebooting their shitty system) AND a $ 3.00 per head charge on top of everything for it being Saturday night.
Whew, ok sorry… I get a little riled up when I think about it.

This is hands down the WORST karaōke place I have ever been too, it doesn’t even deserve one star.
A couple friends and I decided to end the night with karoke. We had heard about this place through a friend of a friend. We gave up and tried to leave after 15 minutes because one of their staff did not show us how to properly use the machine and we only saw less than 40 english songs on there that were mostly repeats of each other. Whatever happened to the binder full of songs that we could physically flip through? Sometimes, technology is a bad thing. After explaining to them that we did not even sing and that we didn’t see hardly any songs, the guy behind the counter tried to make us pay $ 15 anyway, claiming that we were there for 20 minutes and that he couldn’t change the computer… shady mf. 15 minutes of our time there was the other staff guy showing us how to use the machine incorrectly.
I tried to stay calm and reason with him by telling him that if we had really used the machine, then we would pay for it as we’re not cheap but that it was the principal. Thankfully, one of my gf’s spoke cantonese and finally got him to give back our driver’s license and let us go. The staff that showed us how to use the machine finally admitted that he didn’t show us properly and the lady behind the counter knew that we were not going to pay.
To sum it up, poor service, horribly complicated machines and bad attitudes makes this place hands down the WORST Karoke place EVER!

When you walk in, a very dense smoke smell (with an added cover of cheap room spray) greets you (there is a do not smoke sign on the counter). Mainly Chinese songs.
The staff is rude, unresponsive, and only interested in charging you extra fees. Do not let the pretty décor fool you. And as they were absolutely packed (with people waiting in line), I doubt they will improve. Yes, some fools may say this is an authentic HK karaōke joint with the rude as hell HK attitude, but I have been to other ones and they are not rude and their clients smoke outside with no problems. Unless you have a fetish for being abused, check out the other karaōke places, there are many decent (although not great) places in the bay area.

Not sure how many K Box there is on Taraval, but this review is for the one on Taraval and 19^th Ave.
One star for the new furniture and pretty interior design. But service here is TERRIBLE! Come here only if you want to get rip off!
My friend made reservation at 10pm. Got there, and the remote didn’t work, so it took the worker 10 minutes to get it to work. The worker told my friends that we have to get out by 11:30pm unless we want to stay until 2am. We didn’t want to because it’s $ 48/​hr. So we told them we’ll stay until 11:30. I don’t understand how they can tell us what time to stay until… the only reason I can think of is increase their profit and decrease customers’ satisfaction.
My friends and I were having fun singing until 11:10ish when one of the workers came into our room and told us we have to leave soon because the 11:30pm group is here. We all stared at her and then she said «you guys can finish singing the next two songs.» What the hell? So what if the next group is here early? Why did she interrupt us and kick us out when it wasn’t even time yet?
Eight minutes before 11:30pm, they cut off our song, and the same lady who came in earlier was waiting outside our door. We went out to pay and the bill came out to $ 86 (which includes two $ 2 bottles of water). It totally didn’t make sense because first, it took them 10 minutes to fix the remote, then they interrupted us, and then they kicked us out 8 minutes before time was up… and they charged us full 1 and ½ hour? Oh yeah, they also charge 20% tip. Umm, why do they charge that? People usually pay tips for services… but um, excuse me, what kind of services is offered? Like interrupting in the middle of singing and kicking you out?
Oh yeah, they also charge $ 3 per person if you bring your own food in. And they charge a $ 100 deposit if you bring a cake in.
I would never go back to this place, and I do not recommend it either.

Loved the wireless mics and LCD screen. I do agree the mini-​small room is very small. Only fits like 4 people comfortably. I would also recommend NOT getting the rooms right next to the reception desk. It offers no privacy and since there are 3 glass circles on the doors, people and the staff will see you!
As for song selection, like what Lulu said, it depends on the artist. I was surprised they have some very new songs, yet they don’t have some of the HK Top award songs available. I was looking for Stephanie Cheng’s «Red Light, Green Light» but was disappointed.
As for the song selection system, I think it is great but it takes a while to get used to. For instance, you can choose one artist, press A to tab the number of letters per song or press A to choose the most popular songs.
Bottom line, I think they are just starting out. I will be back!