Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAn absolutely ridiculous value.
Reviewed in Canada on December 7, 2020
These speakers looks great, sound great, have ample connectivity options, feel solid, are easy to set up and come with a remote and removable grilles.
Had I bought these for about $250, I'd still be quite happy with them. I bought 2, one for my PC and one for the TV my wife plays DDR on. She's hearing notes in songs she didn't know were there. The bass slam makes it more fun for her to play.
On my PC I spent a good time positioning them for good center image and clarity and adding EQ, which it doesn't need a lot of. I find the mids slightly recessed so vocals sound slightly veiled out of the box, and the treble just needs a little tinkering to sound more natural to my ears. I try to give the subbass a slight boost (rolls off below 50hz, inaudible below 30hz) but it's a bit delicate to not make the bass sound too boomy, as they're not shy on bass. They honestly don't need the EQ for most people, it's just like extracting a little extra performance. I don't recommend adjusting the knobs on the side past about 1.5-2 out of the max 6 setting. You're going to get into clipping and boomy territory pretty quick.
They sound quite nice overall, particularly with movies and orchestral style music. Dynamics and imaging are quite solid. Bass has good slam and body. Clarity is great for the price, but obviously not high end. These are just well rounded and not obviously disappointing in any way.
Negatives? At the highest 10% or so volume settings you can hear minor white noise if you're close to the speakers. Mine are going through my headphones' preamp first so I really don't need to max the internal power on these ever, and the pair I have hooked up to the TV don't seem to be anywhere near short on power.
Mids are just slightly recessed for my tastes. If you're listening to mostly podcasts with these and don't care to tinker with EQ there might be better options. Then again, I usually like a boost around 1k on almost everything I listen to so it might just be me.
The construction is solid overall, but there's sometimes small strings of what I assume is hot glue hanging off edges of a component or 2. It's not caked on, and quite easy to clean, a few seconds really. The build absolutely does not feel cheap at all outside of that. They look great and feel solid, and there's nothing flimsy with any components or connectors. I guess the only other gripe I can think of is the volume adjustment is a rotary encoder rather than a potentiometer, but that's a tradeoff of having a remote, and really not the biggest deal. Uh, the power connector is non-removable? Length is fine though.
As someone who has daily driver Audeze LDC2cs going through a JDS Atom, these speakers are very impressive for being around $100. I'm not a speaker guy so my experience outside of headphones is limited, but these are extremely fun to listen to and have no glaring disappointments compared to my $1000 headphones. I might buy a 3rd set of these as a gift.