Logitech X-230

Sleek, compact, sexy and black! But do they perform? Those looking for average 2.1 speakers at an affordable price will find Logitech's X-230 speakers do the job nicely. However, for better value for money, check out the Inspire 2500 2.1 speakers from Creative. They are cheaper and have a higher audio quality.

We were taken aback by the deceptive size of the X-230s. We didn't expect such a the small subwoofer and speakers to churn out such heavy bass. With the volume turned up, we had our table vibrating while listening to Ben Folds Five, though with a little distortion. Thankfully, this is not the optimal listening level or experience and as such not many people will run into this problem.

For those who like conveniently located volume dials, you may be disappointed. The normal volume control is located on one of the speakers, while the volume for the bass is located on the back of the subwoofer. Since many people don't generally adjust bass volumes all that often, this isn't a huge problem but one worth mentioning nonetheless. In a useful design choice, the headphone jack is in a prime position, located on next to the volume control.

We discovered that the designers made no effort to label the speakers as left or right, even down to their choice of connectors. Using an almost proprietory 9 pin D-Sub connector for the speakers, Logitech have eliminated both the need for separate speaker connectors and the opportunity to use their subwoofer with any other speaker system. If you want to work out where to place your speakers,you will just have to listen to them and figure it out.

We found that the sub-woofer tended to dominate all music we played on the system. Even with the Sub-Woofer volume turned down, the bass was still too loud and took up a sizeable portion of the music being played. For the music we used tracks from Dido, Nightwish, Coldplay, Radiohead, and Ben Folds Five. In the song "Yellow" by Coldplay, the buildup of instruments and volume in the introduction was too muddy for our liking - at the climax, it was difficult to distinguish the separate instruments. This brings us to pitch change; we listened to the song "Idioteque" by Radiohead and the speakers had difficulty with the more violent pitch changes.

Convenient portability is a key feature of these speakers; compared to the Inspire 2500, these speakers are easier to move around the house, take them out to a friends place, plug your MP3 player into it and have a satisfactory listening experience. However we wouldn't recommend using these speakers for more heavy duty occasions, such as providing music at a big party. Get some bigger, more expensive and perhaps 5.1 speakers for something like that .

Fortunately, the speakers can handle loud volumes with only minimal distortion on all the types of music we played. Logitech generally produces good quality products. However, these speakers performed a little below our expectations.