Great for student!
Written: Feb 26 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Cheap, Good Sound, Small
Cons: Boomy Bass, Volume Control Cord
The Bottom Line: If you have only $30 to spend on computer speaker, get the PC Works.
|
|
|
| seowfun's Full Review: Cambridge Soundworks C1MWBWEE 2 Speakers |
Purchase History
My brother was shopping for a computer speaker for his new laptop. As a student, he had tight budget for around $50 to spend on this.
I have been reading great review for the PC Works years ago when it first came out, so I ask him to check it out. At first he thinks it is ugly and old fashioned, and he bought the Creative Inspire 2600 Slim for $60. After listening to that thing for one nite, both of us have severe listening fatigue. Of course, he returns the Creatives and decides to try the PC Works.
Satellite Speakers
The satellite speakers are really small, and a great space saver. But it actually weigh more than the satellite of the Inspire 2600 Slim. It felt really solid holding it.
Sound Quality wise, I have to say I am really impressed with the volume and clarity the small satellites speaker put out. The volume can be turned on to reasonably loud without distortion.
The soundstage is pretty wide, but imaging is kind of diffuse. The high frequency range of the output sounds really good, but as expected for such a small speaker, the midrange sound is very thin and weak. If you listen to symphony, there is really not much mid range sound coming from the speakers, but hey, the much more expensive Bose speakers behave the same too.
Subwoofer
Personally, I am not a fan of sat/sub setup. I go for floor standing Energy speakers on my stero setup. Ideally, subwoofer output should be cutoff at pretty low frequency, like 50Hz so that the listener won't notice its location. But most satellite speaker can't go down to even 100Hz, and there is no exception in this system.
The result is the subwoofer have to play rather high frequency sound, making the user easy to spot its whereabout. With such a small sub, the bass is really boomy, because the sub simply can't dissipate energy fast enough to produce solid beat bass. Some people thought boomy bass are good bass, but that is not my taste. For the setup, we found out it is best to just turn the volume of the bass slightly (about 20%), then the sound blend reasonably well with the satellite.
Setup
Setup is piece of cake. I dislike the volume control cord, as it simply just add more wires to the desk, which is already cluttered with mouse wire, audio output to the sub, and gamepad (when playing game). I prefer volume control on the satellite system.
Value
For $30, I'm pretty sure the PC Works is the best speaker you can get. It blows away the standard speakers that came with computer system. If you willing to spend $50, the Soundworks system, with larger satellites and sub, should perform better.
I complained about the thin sound of sat and boomy bass, but I really didn't expect this speaker not to have such problems. For $30, you really can't expect it to be that good. Otherwise, all those people who spends thousands on stero equipments would be retarded.
Competitors
Like I said before, this system sounds much better than the $60 Creative Inspire 2600. Personally, I think it outperform other setup that cost around $40-$50, such as the Creative Inspire 2.1 2400, and few other systems from Altec or Logictech. The $50 SoundWorks should perform better (with similar build quality but larger size), but I didn't have chance to test it.
Overall
If you only have $30 to spend, or if space saving is important to you, this system is a no brainer. It is worth every penny. Price of computer speakers have came down a long way. If my memory holds, the PC Works actually sounds better than the $200 Yamaha and Altec system I test 4.5 years ago.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
seowfun
|
|
Reviews written: 31
Trusted by: 4 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.