Many
of us want a decent sound system at work. For those who are lucky
enough to progress from the open plan world to their own office its
become possible to have a small HiFi. However while you can leave
behind the wearing of ear buds or headphones now you have your own
small box, you still have issues of size and volume levels.
One obvious choice if the iPod of MP3 speaker set, these are often a
compromise between the iPod housing and controls and the actual
sound quality. Also you may want to listen to an online radio
station if your company's IT department allow you to or you may just
use the CD / DVD drive on your laptop.
Either way a PC speaker set that could also take an aux input from
an MP3 player or iPod would seem a better solution. When we first
heard we'd be getting a PC speaker set we had thought of small and
cheap boxes with a weedy tinny sounding output.
But hold on there these PC speakers were coming from Bose and we
could therefore guarantee that they would not be cheap. In fact we
had a small sweepstake in the office to see just how much Bose could
charge for a simple PC speaker set, none of us got it right. In fact
no one could envision £279 yes £279 for a set of speakers to plug
into a pc or laptop.
The Bose Computer MusicMonitor measures 122mm x 65mm x 123mm and
each unit tips the scale at 500 grams so they are fairly serious
bits of kit and do not in any way feel cheap. Styled in cool size
and emblazoned with the Bose name they do have a certain sense of
class which helps make the price tag not seem insane but they would
have to sound amazing to be worth more than £150.
Set-up is as simple as one could expect with the right speaker both
plugging into the mains and housing the main audio inputs. We
started with both and iPod and a PC input and used some familiar
tracks ranging from classical to some deep funk. Volume control is
via buttons located on the side of the speaker or via a rather
pointless and frankly ugly remote.
Time to fire up the Bose Music Monitors and hear what £279 buys you.
Now the small enclosures don't promise much but boy do they pack a
punch. The first thing that arouses your ears is the rich warm bass
note which could have visitors to your office looking around the
room for the source as its hard to believe that the small Bose units
are producing it. Then there is the separation between the mid and
upper ranges which is again well beyond what one would expect from
mere PC speakers.
volume levels would fail to fill a large room but they are more than
enough for even a big office and there is a remarkable lack of
distortion even near the upper limits of the MusicMonitors.
After a few days of solid testing its fair to say the team were
impressed, Bose have managed to build a small stereo system that
punches well above its size. The clarity of the sound and the
richness of all genres of music is quite stunning when you consider
its coming from just two small boxes attached to a PC.
The key question is are they worth £279, the short answer is no,
while these may be the best PC speakers on the market they are over
priced by at least £100 compared to offerings from Logitech and
others. Even Bose own iPod docks are cheaper and they have an aux
input into which you can plug a PC input. Perhaps over time the Bose
MusicMonitors will drop in price and can gain the best buy status
they truly deserve.
Many
of us want a decent sound system at work. For those who are lucky
enough to progress from the open plan world to their own office its
become possible to have a small HiFi. However while you can leave
behind the wearing of ear buds or headphones now you have your own
small box, you still have issues of size and volume levels.
