After listening to all I could possibly stand from my cheap acer built-in speakers, I broke down and bought these mini speakers. My expectations were not too high because they retail at only $40.
The packaging is durable. The instructions were clear and easy to understand. The housing on the speakers is plastic, but finished smoothly without any rough edges. They feel pretty solid, like the parts tolerances were tight and it was well put together even if it was plastic. The connectors are color coded so that you cannot mess this up and they are a decent quality. Plug the blue tipped cord into the blue tipped sockets and the green cord into the green socket. Then just plug the USB power cord into any USB port and the green cord into the speaker output of your device and you are done.
There is a handy little zipper case that makes this easy for travel or putting into a backpack/brief case or laptop case.
The sound is advertised as 'Clearer Sound'. Honestly that is an understatement. I would call it fantastic sound for little plastic speakers! Far better in every range (high, mid and lows) than my heftier desktop speaker kits for any of my other machines. With a pretty rich stereo sound.
I heard no crackle, static or any background noise. The signal to noise is 78 dB (not bad for the price). My first test was with a digital recording of a harp playing classical music like Fur Elise. You could hear every string with clarity and beauty. It stopped a group of kids nearby who started talking about the songs I was playing. The quality was just amazing for mini-speakers.
So, I may be purchasing another set of these. I heartily recommend them! HP USB Mini Speakers
I was going to post a video review but it took too long to upload and was larger than the 100mb Amazon says is the max. So here is my written review: The HP notebook speakers have great sound, and are very tiny (about three inches) and easy to carry on a trip-with one exception (see negatives). I compared these speakers to GE usb speakers (bad sound very muddled) logitech V-20 which are about twice as large as the HP's (and more expensive) and would not be great travel speakers. The advantage of Logitech over HP is that Logitech have volume as well as other controls on the speakers and only one cable to connect (the material is not springy). I tested the Logitech's at a large box store with the initials B. B however I could not get them up as loud as the HP's. It might have been the pair I tried or because of other noise in the store. They are also more expensive then the HP's.
Ok here is the negative for the HP speakers. There are three cables for the HP's, one goes from speaker to speaker, one goes to the USB port, and one goes to the speaker headset jack. As one reviewer had said these cables are very springy and make it hard to stretch the speakers out without them flopping all over the place. You also have a wirery mess, which isn't good for travel. HP can easily improve these speakers by either making them Bluetooth (in which no cables would be needed) or follow Logitech's lead and use only one cable for the entire setup. The very least HP should do is replace the material the cables are made out of so they are not springy. The HP speakers also have no volume, on/off, base or treble control. All that is done with the software on your laptop. A knob for the volume or inline volume leveler would have been nice.
Bottom line: These speakers have great sound both for bass and treble. They have a lot of potential, however, I might just wait until HP listens to their customers and makes some changes regarding the cabling which is by far the worst flaw. I want to use these speakers with travel as well as at home and there are too many cables to connect (more to lose on a trip) and they are far too springy. For these reasons I cannot recommend The HP's until some changes are made.
Small light weight speakers with a travel case. The sound is ok for the small size but they don't have much bass, which is to be expected. The only real problem I have is the very stiff, springy connection wires combined with the slick, light weight plastic speaker cases made them very difficult to position as they keep moving around.
Had I known this, I wouldn't have bought them.
Hi, I'm just writing this review to do two things. 1) I want to agree with the communal awe over the great sound that these tiny speakers put out... It is truly great. 2) There is an issue that is discussed in these reviews quite often regarding the springy cords used on these speakers. I had these speakers a while back and they had these cords, and the cords were truly quite cumbersome. On these new ones I have bought recently, the cable is just a standard cable and you can get them to stay still no problem!
For the person wanting to give true, powerful sound to your laptop with ultimate portability (and a great price as a kicker), these are the laptop speakers for you. I have tried much of the competition and these blew it all away in sound quality, and all the while taking up half of the size. I hope I have convinced you, because you will be impressed with these, especially at these sale prices around $20, give or take a bit...
Note- If you just have a USB charger that plugs into an outlet, you can use that as the power supply and the audio out cord can be connected to whatever you like and the speakers will work. I noticed some other reviews incorrectly said that these could not be used without a computer, but they can, in the way I described above. - Usb Speakers - Mini Speakers - Portable Speakers - Speakers'
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