Product Reviews

Audioengine's A2 speakers look expensive, with gold-plated connectors and high-gloss wooden cabinets. The individual components even come packed in separate drawstring bags, while the tweeters and woofers are made out of silk and Kevlar respectively.

The cabinets are designed to fit comfortably on your desk, with the footprint of a DVD case. The

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bare ends of the speaker wires are connected with gold-plated thumbscrews on the back of each cabinet, while the left speaker bears a 3.5mm stereo mini-jack socket and twin RCA inputs, along with the volume knob.

Bass tones are extraordinarily powerful. We found that we had to turn down the bass using the equalizer of our audio source to get a balanced sound and prevent it overwhelming the midrange. Once the adjustments were made, notes in the midrange were as well defined as the detailed bass and treble sound. The A2 is surprisingly loud for such a small set, and the general quality of the sound is rich, warm and vibrant.

These speakers are in a different class to standard PC speakers such as the Hercules XPS 2.1 Lounge (reviewed below), and their price reflects that. They look and sound expensive. As long as you're prepared to tweak equaliser settings to get a perfectly balanced sound, the result is well worth the price.