For all intents and purposes, the Speak-er set is a rather elementary pair of desk speakers. There's a volume knob on the rear, an AC power input, and a 3.5mm audio input. This enables it to play nice with any audio source with a 3.5mm output, which is just about everything from a Nexus One to a Latitude D410 from a decade ago. We'd heard earlier that they'd be priced at $120 a pair, but right now, a Benjamin will get a pair shipped straight to your door -- or straight to the stocking of your Secret Santa, now that we think about it.
There's no bass or treble controls, so any equalizing you do has to be done at the source. We tested these out on our own desk, and found the highs and mids to be shockingly accurate and lifelike, though the lows were predictably lacking. That's not to say there wasn't any bass (read: there was!), but pushing the volume knob past the 60 percent mark generally led to muddled lows. Frankly, that's exactly what we expected from a set of 2.0 speakers with no dedicated subwoofer, but our expectations were exceeded when listening to the mids and highs. If you plan on keeping these on your workspace while maintaining a relatively sane, low volume level, they'll definitely do the trick. And they'll look way, way better than any other set of speakers you'll find for $100.
