The Kai KCI-100M is a fairly standard looking ukulele at first glance. While the mahogany is very nice as mahogany goes, with plenty of pattern and grain, there’s not a lot to write home about. Perfectly smart, neat and tidy but run of the mill – there’s nothing to entice those who crave decoration, and nothing to put off those who think it can all be a bit much. There is a side soundport however, that does offer one point of difference. Relatively plain means no extra spent on stuff that doesn’t help the sound, is one way of looking at it.

Kai tend to produce lively and bright sounding ukuleles that aren’t shy on volume and the KCI-100 is no exception here. It keeps a lot of the liveliness you find in their cheaper laminate ukes, while offering a slightly fuller, more rounded mahogany sound. That sound filters through the side soundport, giving you an immediate burst of energy when you strum. The sustain is impressive too, for a uke of this price level.

The mahogany used is solid on the top, with laminate used for the back and sides. This offers a halfway house between sound (where the solid top is more critical than the back and sides), paired with a more affordable laminate body. Kai fit their own unbranded, but perfectly good fluorocarbon strings and a set of robust, closed, geared tuners that do the job without fuss. The finish is quite lightly applied, more of a semi-gloss than a high, mirror gloss, which is tricky to tell from photos alone.

The Kai KCI-100M has a 35mm nut, a fairly standard neck profile and isn’t too heavily made. It’s as if everything that is average and unchallenging has been combined into one instrument. It’s nice to play, with the string spacing and thin-gauge strings both giving a feel of more width that there actually is. It’s not innovative in how it plays, it’s just appealing to the majority of players, which is no bad thing.

At a price level where fancy looking laminates are king, a playable, vibrant-sounding, we have a solid top instrument with a cracking gig bag. It’s not the best ukulele there is, of course. But at this price it would be in with a good shout.

For a video demo of the Kai KCI-100M concert ukulele, click additional info below.

Although it comes with a bag and one strap button, there are other ‘easy-add’ options like low G fitting at the bottom of the page if you scroll down.