Benwin EX-4A 2.1 Speakers

I've been a proud owner of a set of these things for well over five months, but Epinions steadfastly refused to list them until recently. It's all good now, though, and you can treat yourself to another bout of my rambling.

You see, I like the Benwin EX-4s, but you probably won't. Allow me to explain.

As my profile suggests, I'm a bit of a geek. If you give me an inch I'll take a mile in terms of any sort of technology. True geeks aren't content with one speaker system on a computer - They use four.

Well, I do, anyway.

I've got a weedy Asound set that came with one of the office boxes, and those mainly just for looks. They sound so horrible I rarely even turn them on. Then there's my old and faithful Koss HD-50s (http://www.epinions.com/content_46005390980) resting on either side of my monitor, a set of Realistic's (the remains of an old hi-fi system, actually) making up the rear channel and then my EX-4's in front. It's a piecemeal operation, each set coming in as I can afford it. Observant readers will notice that my speaker budget is very small, since I bought the HD-50's a good four or five years ago. But I digress.

The one thing you can't hold agianst the EX-4 rig is the price. I bought the set at a computer show for fifteen bucks, and according to Epinions you can get them retail for twenty. That's not a bad deal for a three speaker sub/sat system, even a fairly shoddy one.

The "subwoofer" (and there will be more on this later) is a fairly standard 4 or 5 inch paper cone speaker job entombed in a moulded plastic case with round port in the front. It holds most of the rig's hardware and drives the two smaller satellite speakers.

Satellite speakers which are quite strange.

The EX-4 satellites are flat panel speakers. Traditional speakers have a plastic or paper cone attached to a magnet that is driven by an electromagnetic "voice coil" behind it. As electrical impulses (sound data, basically) are sent through the coils they attract and repel the magnets on the cones, making them vibrate in a more or less specific manner. This vibration is what makes the sound. Cone speakers have certain limitations involved, though. They're almost universally round, for starters, which means mounting one in a rectangular enclosure always results in lost space. They need a certain depth, as well, what with the cone, magnet, and coil assembly sticking out.

Flat panel speakers are a horse of a different color. They have flat semiflexible panels on the front with "exciters" mounted to the back. Most speaker companies are coy about revealing what their "exciters" acutally are, but one would imagine they're slim magnet-and-voice-coil arrangements. Regardless, the exciters cause the panel of the speaker to vibrate, just like the cone on the traditional speaker, and this makes sound.

There is also much marketing mumbo jumbo on how flat panel speakers deliver "richer, more natural sound" because a center mounted exciter will make the panel ripple as it vibrates instead of merely oscillating. You can take this with whatever sized grain of salt you like. It's still a fact, though, that a speaker's sound quality depends as much on how well it was built as how it was built.

So the satellites are flat panel jobs. They're easel shaped things, with the business end on one face and a plain plastic back on the other to make the things stand up. The sound producing panel on these speakers covers a good majority of the front face of the things, and is a good 6.5 inches tall and 4.5 wide. Poking around on the panel revals that the exciter assembly is located in the center of each speaker, and the panels are anchored with little rubber spacers on either end. Bear in mind that the panels can quite easily be torn off of their backing by any determined toddler, so I'd advise that you teach the kiddies to refrain from pulling at the panels on the speakers.

The power button, volume, "3D enhancer", headphone jack, and bass level controls are all mouned on the right satellite speaker for easy access. This means no fiddling around with your toes to try to hit controls on the subwoofer under you desk, as a great many cheap systems require that you do. The headphone jack is nice touch as well, allowing you to plug yourself in without rummaging around behind your computer. It's an interesting sidenote that my EX-4's headphone jack works while the speakers themselves are turned off just as well as it does while they're on. Odd, but not groundbreaking.

The satellites are designed to stand vertically. They work just as well horizontally, though, and do so in my setup so they can rest in front of my monitor. The rest of the prime speaker real estate on my desk is already taken. This, too, is nothing earthshattering, but it's nice to know that you're left with some options.

So how do they sound?

Well, not too bad for something that only runs you twenty bucks. The subwoofer has a little bit of kick to it, but I found that this system just isn't all that loud. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly loud enough for anything you're going to want to do with your computer, but Benwin had the good sense not to make the thing capable of going excessively loud, which would invariably result only in the output becoming exceedinly distorted. The bass is good enough for a computer system. The subwoofer only has a 5 inch driver at best, so it's not really capable of real floorboard shaking bass frequencies, but it does add enough low end audio to sound nice. The satellites are a little weak on midrange, alleviated a bit by the chunk of midrange that the subwoofer puts out, but it's nothing spectacular. Personally, I find that the system sounds excellent with my Koss speakers backing up the midrange, but alone they may leave some people wanting more.

In the box you get speakers, the necessary cables to hook them all up, and a power brick. There is a little quickstart sheet that tells you how to plug everything in, a registration card, and that's it. These are just speakers, though. No software is included nor required, and you don't get any extra cables.

Tally it all up and this is an adequate system for casual use that simply can't be beat on price. If you have a choice between the EX-4 and a system with no subwoofer, I'd go for this one