I bought the remarkably inexpensive Boston Acoustics SoundWare XS 2.1 speaker system from Amazon for $159 to put in my younger daughter's bedroom. The system needed to be small with wall-mountable speakers and could not require a separate receiver. It needed to have Bluetooth capability to work with her iPad and needed to have additional inputs to accommodate a television in the future. It also needed to sound reasonably good and it needed to be available at a reasonable price point. This system met all of my criteria, based on the reviews, but there was no way to know how good it would really sound until I get it set up in the room.
The system consisted of a small front firing 8" subwoofer and two roughly cube shaped satellites with 2.5" drivers. The first thing I noticed about the satellites was how solid they were. I was surprised at how much they weighed and how good the fit and finish were. These neither looked nor felt like cheap speakers. The satellites are oriented in a diamond shape that makes them marginally more interesting than the usual cube. They come with rubber feet for shelf placement and with articulating wall mounts that allow 40 degrees of up/down movement and 20 degrees of side-to-side movement. I chose the wall mounts, because the only place I could put the speakers was on the wall a few inches below the ceiling (I had to hang them above two doorways). The subwoofer went on the floor in the space between the bedroom door and the closet door. This arrangement was not ideal, but it was really the only option available.
The subwoofer was very compact at about 10x10x11 inches. It contains the amplifier for the speakers, as well as the amplifier for the sub. The back panel contains the speaker binding posts, the subwoofer volume control, an analog input, a Toslink input and a port for the control module. The sub is a sealed enclosure front-firing design. The fit and finish are very nice for something this expensive, at least on par with the entry level Polk sub I have in the downstairs playroom.
I tried the system with a variety of music and was pretty impressed with how good it sounded considering how little I paid for it. The subwoofer clearly does not play super-low, but it lacked the boomy and accentuated mid-bass you often hear with these systems. The sound was pretty well balanced and sounded consistently decent with a wide spectrum of content, so long as it was not pushed hard. At anything approaching the levels I would actually allow in my kid's bedrooms, the system was extremely well behaved. The little satellites did a nice job with human voices without sounding honky, which is sometimes a problem with tiny speakers. The only real complaint I had was the sense of gap between the speakers and the sub. The fact that the speakers were seven feet above the subwoofer did not help. I chalk it up to the relatively high crossover point and suspect that the sound would be a lot better integrated had I not had to mount the speakers so high. This is an inherent flaw with all such systems, however, and I did not find the Boston system to be at all unusual in this regard.
The bottom line here is that these are very well constructed, decent sounding speakers at an extremely low price. I think they are an amazing bargain and would not hesitate to recommend them for dorm rooms, bedrooms, dens or any other spaces where one might want an inconspicuous little sub-sat system.
The system consisted of a small front firing 8" subwoofer and two roughly cube shaped satellites with 2.5" drivers. The first thing I noticed about the satellites was how solid they were. I was surprised at how much they weighed and how good the fit and finish were. These neither looked nor felt like cheap speakers. The satellites are oriented in a diamond shape that makes them marginally more interesting than the usual cube. They come with rubber feet for shelf placement and with articulating wall mounts that allow 40 degrees of up/down movement and 20 degrees of side-to-side movement. I chose the wall mounts, because the only place I could put the speakers was on the wall a few inches below the ceiling (I had to hang them above two doorways). The subwoofer went on the floor in the space between the bedroom door and the closet door. This arrangement was not ideal, but it was really the only option available.
The subwoofer was very compact at about 10x10x11 inches. It contains the amplifier for the speakers, as well as the amplifier for the sub. The back panel contains the speaker binding posts, the subwoofer volume control, an analog input, a Toslink input and a port for the control module. The sub is a sealed enclosure front-firing design. The fit and finish are very nice for something this expensive, at least on par with the entry level Polk sub I have in the downstairs playroom.
I tried the system with a variety of music and was pretty impressed with how good it sounded considering how little I paid for it. The subwoofer clearly does not play super-low, but it lacked the boomy and accentuated mid-bass you often hear with these systems. The sound was pretty well balanced and sounded consistently decent with a wide spectrum of content, so long as it was not pushed hard. At anything approaching the levels I would actually allow in my kid's bedrooms, the system was extremely well behaved. The little satellites did a nice job with human voices without sounding honky, which is sometimes a problem with tiny speakers. The only real complaint I had was the sense of gap between the speakers and the sub. The fact that the speakers were seven feet above the subwoofer did not help. I chalk it up to the relatively high crossover point and suspect that the sound would be a lot better integrated had I not had to mount the speakers so high. This is an inherent flaw with all such systems, however, and I did not find the Boston system to be at all unusual in this regard.
The bottom line here is that these are very well constructed, decent sounding speakers at an extremely low price. I think they are an amazing bargain and would not hesitate to recommend them for dorm rooms, bedrooms, dens or any other spaces where one might want an inconspicuous little sub-sat system.
