Customer Reviews

Logitech Z-10 2.0 Interactive Speaker System

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My old Logitech Z-560 developed a short in it creating nasty crackling noises over one channel. The Z560 was a rare beast, a $140 400 watt 4.1 monster that Logitech built to really high standards to create a strong foot forward into the PC speaker market. Sadly, their quality has declined since then, and their current offerings are cheaply made, sound far worse with music than the 560s, and have even fuzzier and more overwhelming bass than the 560 did (the systems one flaw). I decided to try 2.0 systems to see if I could get good PC sound without the added failure risk of a high powered sub and the muddiness that all that extra bass and clumsy frequency transitions between sats and sub causes...

My findings, from worst to best:

Logitech Z-10: 30 watts. Looks good, costs a lot, $150, list. Sounds dreadful. Despite having a largish 3" woofer, and a 1" tweeter, the Z-10 seems to be doing a lot of signal processing of music and the soundstage sounds compressed and artificial. Changing bass and treble makes things worse, and your music will sound different (and worse) on these speakers than it would normally. The touch controls and LCD screen are useless pricy gimmicks that increase chance of failure and add weight and cost to the system. Who in the world needs to see the name of the track playing on the bottom of the speaker? Anyway, these are a disappointment, with the worst sound and tied for the highest price. The speakers are heavy and well made, very stylish, though easily smudged with the reflective black surface on the front of the speaker. Logitech needs to redo these, silly gadgets and useless feature are tolerable, bad sound however is always a deal-breaker. Two stars, for style and build quality.

Klipsch ProMedia 2.0: Also 30 watts. Nice sound, good price, $100 list. Dual 2.5" woofers and a 1" tweeter with a Klipsch high-freq horn in it. These sound pretty good, but they are unexpectedly bulky and poorly made. The oddly formed speaker housing means these take up a lot of space and the volume and bass control knobs look like they come from a $10 CyberAcoutsics set. The cheapie knobs, bulk, and ugliness make these fit for corporate presentations where good loud sound matters and where style is largely irrelevant. For the home user, the cheap knobs may well break over time, which was the Achiles heel for my 560s; quality system, cheap volume pot. Three stars, good though not excellent sound, reasonable price, loses points for ugliness and some shoddy cost cutting in build quality. The bulk is sort of a neutral issue, as the larger box size probably helps the sound and bass extension of the units, but for some users the footprint and added portability difficulties may be an issue.

Creative Gigaworks T20: 28 watts (though the box says 22 watts!) $100 list. Creative obscures most specs on these, probably fearing the single 2.5" driver versus the bigger Logitech and the double same size drivers of the Klipsch may convince buyers that the T20 lacks in comparison to its rivals. Truth is the build and design of the T20s makes them sound much better than either the Z10s or the Promedias. These little speakers can put out an awesome amount of clear accurate sound, and they look great and feel very sturdy. Treble in particular is excellent, and the alleged Bass Xport technology must have something to it, as bass is more than adequate. The separate bass and treble knobs may or may not appeal; to some, they offer more control, to others the added circuitry distorts the signal and gives an added area of complexity in the design that may fail. The portability is excellent. The only real problem is that Creative is so secretive about the wattage and driver size, out of unnecessary concern that buyers may avoid getting these because of a few watts or a half inch. These sound great, look good, and the size to sound ratio is impressive. Four stars.

M-Audio AV40s: 40 watts, $200 list. My personal choice, these speakers are much bigger than the other contenders, but the amazing sound and plentiful bass will convince you that you don't need to even think about a sub system. These wooden cabinets are very attractive and sturdy, but are not exactly portable weighing 14 lbs and being quite bulky. (More so than the Klipsch, but they also look nicer and are built better.) Besides the size and weight, the other issue is cost and maybe availability as few vendors sell M-Audio, and the price for the AV40s even with discount will be $50-$65 more than the cost of the other units I looked at. To me the sound and accuracy (no distortion at high volume, lots of accuracy at low volume) of the M-Audios, at both low and high volume, offsets all the problems. Four stars, loses a star because of higher cost and weight. (Note though these are still theoretically portable, far more so than any 2.1 system or even the average boombox...)

Do You Need More Power, a Subwoofer, or More Speakers? Probably not. If you sit at your desk with the speakers a few feet away from you, you do not need much more than 30 or 40 watts for great powerful sound. A subwoofer (unless it costs a lot!) will just screw up crossover freqs, create too much bass, and encourage the mfgr to give you cheapie satellites on the theory that the loud prominent sub will wow the casual listener who will not care that the sats have 1" uni-drivers and are made of cheap light plastic. Unless you need to entertain parties with your PC, you don't need more power or a sub.

As far as surround sound, unless you watch movies on your PC or play a lot of FPS shooters that need positional audio, the added wires and difficulty of positioning the rear and surround sats in the listening environment are too much of a pain for most folks. Plus a decent PC surround sound system is at least $250, meaning a much higher cost than any of these 2.0 systems.

Buying Recommendations: Don't mind big and bulky? Get the M-Audio AV40s. (Note the company has a smaller less powerful variant, the Av20s, but I did not hear these and they do not seem to be widely available so I cannot comment.) Want small and portable, get the Creative T20. The Logitechs unfortunately have no comparative strengths, and the Klipschs are adequate but offer no real advantage over the Creative. If you can find the Promedias significantly discounted, they may be viable.

I've just picked up a pair of the Z-10's and so far I'm rather pleased with them. They have a definite quality build, you can tell when you pick up the left speaker which feels to be about 8-10 pounds as it houses the amplifiers. The LCD is nicely informative and the touch controls quite responsive, though not overly so where you have to worry about changing settings accidentally.

Pros:
1. Excellent sound quality with more than just a mere hint of bass.
2. Good staging and soundfield.
3. Responsive controls.
4. Enough output to sit across the room and listen to them with decent quality at only half volume.
5. Very easy setup and installation.
6. The four internet radio presets are a nice touch.

Cons:
1. Bass and treble have to be turned all the way up for my tastes otherwise the speakers sound rather on the flat side.
2. Right speaker gets a bit warm from the LCD backlight after a while.
3. The mirror finish on the speakers needs frequent cleaning on the touch controls or you end up with fingerprints aplenty.
4. The POP3 mail function only allows for one email account and it doesn't seem to pick that up immediately.
5. The LCD display doesn't immediately switch to the primary app when you activate it if it's not in rotation mode.

In all, these are a really nice pair of speakers and worth the cost in my book. The LCD display problems are a minor caveat and probably sure to be fixed in later versions of the driver software. Once tuned in, these speakers produce an open and spacious soundfield with plenty of volume. However, these should be considered audiophile-grade speakers or studio monitors. If you're looking for room-shaking bass, look elsewhere. If you like detail and nuance though, these might just satisfy your tastes for somewhat budget PC monitor speakers. They're worth the listen and the USB interface doesn't hit the system hard if at all and I run an ancient machine.

If you like high quality audio on your PC, give 'em a go.

I bought these speakers and I love them. 4 instead of 5 stars for missing out of the box Mac support.

There is Mac OS X support available in the form of a free tool called LogitechLCDTool :-)

I just received these speakers and I can say they are defiantly worth getting. The sound is rich with excellent bass for speakers of this size. The volume can go much louder than one would expect for such small speakers. If you are looking for a quality pair of speakers and don't want to have something that will take up a lot of space then these should be perfect for you. I can truly say these speakers are one of the few things that I bought that I'm truly happy with, so happy in fact that I bought a 2nd pair for my other computer. These work perfect with my laptop and really have great sound for either listening to music or watching DVD. In addtion to really sounding great they have a jack that you can plug your MP3/Ipod to and even include the wire needed.

Rock On!

I have to say I love these speakers!!!! The sound is great. I tried every speaker system without a big subwoofer and these sounded the best!!!! Actually bought the bose 2 companion and returned them. Everybody that hears them says the same thing. The speakers are loud and have a nice crisp sound. The best 2.0 speaker system out there!!!

I bought these speakers for my new Macbook, after downloading a program online that a guy created that allow them to work with a Mac. You can even customize the code and create different options for the screen and functions. They look and sound great!

These speakers look nice and produce quality sound, if not powerful. You are going have connect some other way if you have quality sound card. The software for the LCD is fine, however, the email doesn't connect to server very well or is too slow, so I disabled it. These speakers are good for using on a computer which they are intended for. The price is reasonable on Amazon, but $149 is somewhat overpriced. These speakers aren't powerful enough for $149 even with interactive display. I will recommend these speakers purchased at a lower price. Also don't worry about the finger prints,they wipe off. Please! that's too picky.

Definitely a nice pair of speakers for those who don't have space for a subwoofer or just want a unique look and great sound. These speakers have very nice bass for their size and the lcd screen and touch buttons are actually pretty useful for listening to music without directly using your PC. I haven't had any problems with unresponsive controls at all, it just takes the right touch/brush movement that you learn within a few hours of actually using the speakers. I only wish they were completely compatible with more music players, so far I haven't been able to get winamp to work with the pause and skip buttons so I've had to resort to windows media player when I want to use those functions.

Overall I'd definitely recommend these speakers for anyone willing to shell out the bucks. Based on sound alone, this the best 2.0 system I've owned and it looks good and works flawlessly to boot.

I'm disappointed.

The quality of the box and packaging is tremendous. The speakers are heavy, look high quality and have great aesthetics. The touch features work well, and the software installation was easy. I like the display and would like to buy it separately, however none of these great features have a thing to do with how the speakers sound. The speakers were sorely incapable of reproducing even a moderate amount of bass, or clean highs. The sound was very flat and non-dimensional. The sounds it does produce are clean, but you aren't hearing the highest of the highs or lowest of the lows with this set.

Don't expect pristine highs. Don't expect any moderate amount of bass. If this were a 2.1 system instead of a 2.0 (meaning it came with a sub woofer) I'd give it 4 stars instead of 2 simply because of the innovative touch and display system as well as aesthetics.

My favorite speaker setup in 2.1 is currently the Bose companion 3 2.1 system. These Logitech speakers are half the cost of the Bose system, but definitely less than half the performance. For the volume and breadth of sound produced, I'd say the speakers are too large. They are half as tall as my 19" flat panels. Had they been phenomenal I could deal with the size. They sure "look" powerful.

Everything about these speakers is great except for the sound they produce. If these were made in a 2.1 system, they might have a chance at being competitive.

I'm not a hater reviewer, and don't often rate products less than a 3 (check my other reviews). I'm pretty picky when it comes to sound, but I'm not unpleasable. These just weren't even acceptable enough for me to say they were ok. I had a 2.1 system similar to Logitech's current model the Z340, and was happier with that $60 pair of speakers than these. Glad that I'm only reviewing these speakers, because I wouldn't pay more than $30-$45 for them.

Logitech describes them with words like "powerful", "rich quality" and "studio-quality". I couldn't agree with any of those descriptions. They didn't fuzz out or anything, but definitely not stand-out sound.

First off, I think the sound on these speakers is amazing. Too bad they're complete crap in every other way.

The cool display on the front panel? Unusable. The track-list display crashes on me once a day. It's to the point now where I've just disabled it altogether. So now it just shows the clock. Cool. I already have a clock on my desktop, so that's a useless feature. The e-mail notification also doesn't work, so the entire front display is completely useless. And, yes, I've downloaded and installed the latest drivers, uninstalled and re-installed the software, etc. It just plain doesn't work.

Next.

Often my speakers won't turn on. This means I have to reach behind my desk, unplug them and plug them back in. This happens about every other day.

Sometimes my speakers won't turn off. This also happens about every other day. This means I have to reach behind my desk ....

These speakers, while sounding great, are absolute garbage and a complete waste of money. Logitech ought to be ashamed (and I ought to get my money back). I would be hard pressed to consider anything else by this manufacturer again. Junk, junk, junk.