Mahalo MR1BU Soprano Ukulele - Blue

My daughter is learning the ukulele at school this year and has shown quite an interest so she was looking to buy one for herself for when the school one has to be returned at the end of term. She decided to buy the same one as she has for school but in a different colour (blue) so she bought this. It came from Manns Music and fulfilled by Amazon.It arrived well-packed in an outer box containing the triangular ukulele box inside. The strings were all detuned which is fine, as you don't want it tuned in the factory in Indonesia and then have it suffer a change of temperature that causes the strings to over-tension. I tuned it up to match my own ukulele then stretched the strings (pulling them about 1-2cm away from the frets to settle them in) and tuned it again.As with any stringed instrument with new strings, it does take a while for the strings to settle, especially with the type of termination the ukulele has, i.e. a knot in the nylon (rather than a brass nipple as in a steel-string guitar) and the knot needs to fit snug against the bridge termination which can take some time. My own ukulele (which cost five times this one) took a week or two before one of its strings finally settled down.The ukulele sounds fine for the price and the colour is nicely finished. Comes with a little bag as well, although more for keeping the dust off than offering any protection! Be prepared to tune it every time you use it until the strings settle (as with any ukulele) and you'll soon have a great little uke to strum or pick as you prefer. One little detail that my daughter loves is the dolphin-shaped tuning heads (see picture) as she loves cetaceans 🐋.

My first uke so decided to go for the cheaper option with better strings. Was dubious to wether a plastic one would sound ok but for the price thought i'd give it a go to see how i got on. Incredibly quick delivery to an area of the uk most companies beleive is only accessible via the dark side of the moon, so very impressed with that. The product itself seems really well made, looks good and (ok its my first uke) but sounds great. Bought a clip on tuner with it which i fully reccommend you do. Bit of a poor bag but for the price you cant complain, after all who needs the bag if your gonna play it! Will keep the dust off but if you gonna throw it in your backpack for travelling maybe get a better bag. All in all a fab product for the price, very happy, surprised and better than i thought it would be.

I bought this for my niece as a birthday present and she is very much enjoying learning to play.Being a guitarist for many years myself I was pleasantly surprised with the quality and would recommend this as a good starter instrument.

As a beginner this was the perfect choice for me, it's not expensive but still made by a recognised ukulele brand - which is clear in the excellent production quality. The colour was exactly as in the picture and came with a black carry case. The uke was very out of tune when it arrived, but I downloaded a uke tuning app and had it tuned within a matter of minutes. When you begin playing, it gets out of tune fairly quickly but after a couple of days the strings had settled and now I only have to check before I play.Overall, I highly recommend this uke for beginners, it looks fun and there's a ton of great tutorials out on YouTube (within a couple of days I had learnt some basic chords that work for lots of songs), plus it's a lot of fun!

My daughter had decided to use some Christmas money to buy a ukulele she found in the toy section of a department store. Very quickly we discovered that even allowing time for the strings to bed in etc, it just wouldn't hold the tuning at all. I can put up with random strumming, but the dischords were slowly driving me up the wall. I returned that ukulele and did a bit of looking around to find one that wasn't too expensive but had better reviews. I found this Mahalo one and was encouraged by the good reviews. My daughter was very into the shiny blue colour ;) When the ukulele arrived, it was much quicker and easier to tune than the previous one. Still going to take a while for the strings to hold their tuning (this is normal, apparently!) but already I can appreciate the richer sound and general superior quality to the "toy" version from the shop. My daughter is thrilled and is strumming away happily.

I usually love Mahalo but this one came with the white nylon strings that ive only seen on cheaper ukes before that tune poorly. Beautiful blue colour, changed the strings for £4.

I've been playing ukulele for a little while and have been trying to get my brother to play. So I thought what better way than to get him a nice entry-level uke for his birthday last month. I wanted to get him something that wasn't going to break the bank and was planning to restring it with a set of Aquila strings once delivered (from experience I wholeheartedly agree that nice strings on a cheap uke is a much better situation that cheap strings on a nice uke!). This uke already has Aquilas fitted as standard (although they still need stretching and tuning. Don't expect these to be ready to play straight out of the box!). Overall very happy. The uke sounds very good (although I found the intonation to be a little bit dubious towards the 'dusty end' of the fretboard). Really good fun to play. An excellent entry level uke. If anyone asks me what uke they should buy as a beginner, I will always point them in this direction.