Over the last few years (mainly thanks to my wifi router) I seem to be using my laptop around my house and garden more and more. I use it for everything, watching films, browsing the net, playing games, and listening to music (even though i have a far better audio and visual setup else where in my home, sometimes I just want to be out in the garden and have some entertainment).
But one big problem is the very quiet and poor quality speakers built into my laptop (admitidly, it is an Acer, and not some top of the range Alienware, but it is very poor quality…). Listening to music outside on it is very difficult, due to the under powered speakers. So I was very pleased to be hearing that I was to be reviewing some small laptop speakers from Logitech.
One of the biggest problems that laptops have is power. There are not always a place for you to plug it into the wall. And the same applies for these notebook speakers. Logitech had several options - powered just the same as headphones are, through the jack (which would result in even worse sound than normal built in laptop speakers), battery powered speakers or speakers powerered from the laptop (via usb). And they went with the USB option. Of course this drains battery power, but its a lot more convenient than having to replace batteries within the speakers themselves every so often.
The Logitech V20 notebook speakers simply plug into a spare USB socket, and provide (relativly) crisp and sharp sounds. Although I only tested it under Windows, it works fine with Apple notebooks too. Windows (XP) recognised the speakers straight away and I was playing my tunes through Winamp in less than a couple of minutes of plugging it in.
The sound quality is above average for what you would expect these speakers (in this price range) to be capable of. I was quite suprised, as I was imaging them to be quite poor sound quality. The volume is more than adequate, too.
Logitech include a small carry case, which protects the speakers during transit and provides a very easy way to transport them when moving around with your laptop.
All in all it is a very handy pair of speakers if you use your laptop very often and miss hearing what is going on in your media. Overall rating: 8/10.