Gadget Reviews

Price: £99
Available from: Amazon.co.uk

Star Rating: ****

The first thing that immediately grabs your attention is the design of the JBL Creature III 2.1 PC Speakers. You could be forgiven for thinking that you're witnessing the start of an alien invasion - the Subwoofer looks like some sort of mothership and the two satellite speakers resemble two UFO's!

The speakers come in a range of colours; black, white, red, aluminium and grey so there should be a colour to suite most people. We were sent the white speakers to review and thought that the colour worked well on most desks - but I insisted they were better on mine!

They look great but how do they sound? Whilst the Creature III speakers won't match a more expensive Bose system the quality of sound really is superb!

Whether you're watching TV or films on your computer, playing games, or even Spotify the speakers produce a consistantly clear and natural sound with excellent low and mid frequencies.

Even at full volume - which by the way is surprisingly loud - the sound remains clear and distortion free.

The 'mothership' is home to bass and treble controls which gently click when moved to a neutral position. Whilst the subwoofer does have quite a large footprint, once the system is set up you probably won't need to fiddle with the controls too much so it can be hidden behind or above a monitor.

The two satellite speakers are quite small and one of them is home to the volume controls. The buttons respond to touch well, although they are a little bit on the small side. You can also mute the speakers by touching both the up and down buttons at the same time.

The Creature III system connects to devices via a standard 3.5mm jack meaning as well as computers you can hook them up to MP3 players and even some mobile phones. This cable is also quite long meaning that length shouldn't get in the way of finding a good position for the subwoofer.

With and RRP of £99 the JBL Creature III speakers probably aren't bad value for money, especially if you want your speakers to be a bit different!