Date: May 6th, 2002
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Head Editor & Hardware Reviewer)
Product was donated by: Labtec Inc.
Best Price for this Product: Amazon.com <--Click here for the best deal

PRODUCT SETUP & ADDITIONAL FEATURE RUN-THROUGH

Now, I think speaker setup is pretty easy and an installation guide is really not necessary. Every connector in the kit is colour coordinated and easy to match up. If you have problems with this speaker system install, I have no idea how you lived to be the age you are now.

On the back of the woofer is where all the connectors are attached, very easy, very simple.

The satellites, as said before can be mounted on your desk like normal.

Or, they can be mounted on the wall. I found the desktop orientation to better suit my setup better as will you with this purchase.

Now I'm going to show you how this set of speaker will dress up your workstation, and trust me, I need it.

I went from a work station comprised of this...

To this, not a bad dress up, matches my 19inch Samsung TFT LCD quite well (Review coming soon).

CONCLUSIONS & AFTERTHOUGHTS

As a computer user like everyone, I use my computer/workstation for everything from watching TV (thanks to ATI), and for listening to music and just cannot enjoy either of these without a decent set of speakers. The Labtec PulseTM-420 Speaker System surprised me for its small size. This little system is LOUD!!! And the bass is not that bad either. But with the good, I did indeed find the bad. For one, a separate subwoofer volume control would be nice because sometimes, you need to cut out the bass entirely when you are working in the early hours of the morning and don't need to wake your significant other with bass kicks coming from your workroom. Funny thing that they would cut this feature out when it was included in last year's model. I just don't get why they cut that feature out (sigh). The second problem was definitely the headphone jack. For one, it should have it's volume controlled through the volume control like the speakers themselves. And the third issue was the placing the headphone jack on the right speaker. If you use this configuration, the headphone cable will be dragged over the mousepad and keyboard while you're working and gets very annoying when you constantly get your hand caught in the headphone cable while reaching for the mouse. Now if you are left handed, you will be ok, but everyone knows, right-handed people are the dominate portion of the population number wise (No offense to south paws =)). If these small, but annoying issues are dealt with in the next model year, this will be an unbeatable product for the price ($39.99US).

Pro's:

-Crisp, clear sound quality
-Good Bass Response
-Clean, Modern Design
-Wood enclosed Subwoofer for improved Bass Response
-Speakers can be desktop or wall-mounted
-Small and Space Efficient

Con's:

-Volume control needed on the subwoofer
-Headphone Jack Volume has to be controlled by the Volume control on the speaker
-Headphone Jack would be better placed on the left speaker
-Blew my damn headphone!!! >=(