They truly are a replacement for ordinary 2.0 PC speakers as they bring a much more life-like experience to the whole game playing environment. The Altec Lansing's down-firing sub outperformed the others as a rumbling airplane and a huge explosion were delivered meticulously for a speaker of this price. The Creative also is a good gaming speaker in the way it handled the bass and the highs without struggling too much. It retained a lot of details as well. The Logitech performed averagely across all frequency ranges but one problem was making the sub-woofer perform, as we needed to turn the volume up to annoying levels.

Features, Design & Usability

Both the Altec Lansing and Creative speakers came with satellites which have a two way speaker design, meaning the tweeter and midrange drivers are separate. This design has an advantage over the one-way design in Logitech's satellites as there are separate drivers to handle each range of sound frequency. The satellites on Altec Lansing are rated at 7 watts RMS per channel, with the subwoofer rated at 14 watts RMS -- the total power output becoming 28 watts. The Inspire has a rated total output of 29 watts RMS (6 watts x2 satellites and 17 watts for the subwoofer).

This gives the Inspire the highest rated total output among the three. Logitech has a total output power of 25 watts RMS. For connectivity, both Altec Lansing and Logitech have auxiliary inputs for connecting another audio source apart from the headphones input. The Inspire only has a headphones jack out with no auxiliary input. This auxiliary input is convenient to have as we could just plug in any MP3 or audio player to this port without having to remove the main audio cable from the back of the PC.

Among the three, Logitech is the only speaker which came with a docking station for iPod or any portable media player and this is where all the input ports and main volume control are located. Treble controls are absent on the Logitech and Creative speakers but Altec Lansing has both bass and treble controls. And the bass Controls for both Creative and Logitech are inconveniently located at the back of the subwoofer while Altec Lansing has conveniently placed all the connection ports and controls on the front of the right satellite. This makes Altec Lansing a pleasure to use, but our grouse here is the lack of an indicator defining the control buttons. Both the Logitech and Creative satellites are slim and have smaller footprints than the Altec Lansing.