Cute
Written: Mar 16 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Inexpensive, well-made, decent-sounding
Cons: No headphone jack, not for the discriminating audiophile
The Bottom Line: Considering the sound, price and design, these are easy to recommend. The look might be a little gimmicky, but I feel in this case that form does follow function.
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| mortalcoil's Full Review: JBL Creature II Computer Speakers |
I've always been skeptical of PC speaker setups employing tiny satellites and a "subwoofer" which is really just a single woofer -- the main virtues of these systems are easy placement and low cost, not great sound quality.
For the new PC in my son's room, I wanted a speaker system that was rugged, decent sounding, compact and visually appealing. With their bell-curve housings and glowing green LEDs, the JBL Creature speakers seemed to fit the bill.
The first indicator that these might be better than stock speakers is the weight of the power supply. It's not huge, but it has a nice heft for a transformer driving such small speakers. The build quality of the units is also a step up from, say, Cambridge PC Works. Setup is extremely easy, especially with the included color-coded cables. The speakers look perfect for a kid's room; silver with chrome accents, two fist-sized pods umbilically connected to the mothership. Worth mentioning are the "touch" volume controls; these work really well, and are much more elegant than a volume knob would have been on these speakers.
Which brings us to the sound. For games, it's perfectly fine. For a 2.1 system, the sub/sat integration is quite good; this may have something to do with the fact that the sub is downward-firing, and thus less sensitive to placement with respect to walls. Considering that the bass transducer is only about 4 inches, lower frequencies were pretty good; not terribly deep, but articulate and weighty. I did notice that the sound is more "forward" than I like, and that the highs are not as airy as those on my Diva Swans PC speakers. Increasing the treble a bit offered some improvement. Cranking up the volume caused noticeable distortion.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
mortalcoil
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Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 85
Trusted by: 9 members
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