grimjack2's Full Review: Labtec spin™ 45 2 Speakers
At work, I was placing my Office Depot order, and I was thinking about the fact that the computer at my desk didn’t have any speakers. The machine has a sound card, but the speakers had been removed and put on someone else’s machine before I got here. There isn’t a lot of room on the desk for anything large, and I figured no one would mind if I just got a cheap pair of $25 speakers. I mention that number because I figured that this would be the cheapest price I would see. At computer shows, I often see $10-$15 speakers that are pretty bad, and figured that Office Depot would have to be at least $10 more than that. Much to my surprise there was a pair for just $10, and I’ve heard some decent Labtec equipment before so I figured why not.
Even more surprising than the fact they exist and are so cheap even at a retail store is the fact that these sound better than the $25 speakers from a few years ago, that are much larger and less convenient.
The Labtec Spin 50’s are only $9.99 (to be precise) and even came with a free pair of headphones. The headphones aren’t anything special, being made of just wire, with no plastic support except to fit over your ears. These can be handy in an office environment when you don’t want sounds to be heard by people at a desk near you. The headphone jack is easily accessed from the front of the left speaker.
Also on the left speaker is a long volume knob that protrudes about an inch from the speaker. Easy to grab and reach, although I think a less oblong dial would work just as well. The on/off button to the right of it is the traditional type for low end speakers. It is stronger than the weight of the speaker so you have to hold the back of the speaker as you press it, otherwise you will simply knock the speaker off of the desk. There is also a very bright green power on light on the left speaker. It could have been dimmer, but I’m not really complaining.
The right speaker is completely barren of any controls. There is a very nice cable storage system located underneath each speaker so that you can wrap and hide the cables. Even my far more expensive Cambridge Soundworks at home don’t have this feature so there are long cables draped behind my computer desk. These cables also seem much longer than average for low-end speakers. The cable to the computer is about six feet long, and the cable between the speakers is about four feet long. I remember some cheap computer speakers that came with such a short cable that I couldn’t even reach each side of the monitor with the computer sitting under the desk.
If I have any complaints about the speakers, it would be their unusual shape. Not that I like the non-aesthetically pleasing rectangle shape in general, but in a confined computer area, rectangle speakers make it easier to stack stuff on them, and seem to take up less room. These speakers have an odd rounded shaped to them similar to the lower half of a bowling pin.
There is a little bass port on each speaker that according to the documentation “allows the air to move freely without distortion for bigger bass and a full rich sound”. I’m not certain how well each subjective adjective describes the results, but these do sound far better than other low end speakers at work that don’t have the bass.
The speakers come with a two page manual that is actually far smaller when you see that it is repeated in six languages. The manual suggests setting the speaker volume to the center position and to then try the mixer volume setting at two-thirds or greater. This was actually too loud for my office, as I set the no-name sound card in my system to less than one-forth and the volume knob at only about 10% for just the standard beeps and wave file sounds.
Overall, I’m extremely happy with these speakers. They sound better than most speakers that are built in to monitors these days, but of course far worse than even the $60 computer speakers. Yet, I don’t need that good of quality for my office machine. MP3 files sound surprisingly good at a high volume when I’m working late and no one else is around, and that is about as demanding as I’m ever going to get with them.
Do all $10 speakers sound this good? I doubt it, and recommend these highly!
You are bidding on a BRAND NEW, OPENED box of Labtec COmputer speakers. They simply plug into each other and then to the back of computer or other dev...More at eBay
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