Digital Home Thoughts: Creative GigaWorks T20: Not Bad at All

I picked up a pair of these speakers yesterday and figured I'd whip up a quick post about them. I'm not inclined to write up a full review because I bought these myself. Creative is notoriously stingy with review products, and to date, has refused to send me any product I've ever asked for. Yeah, I'm slightly bitter about being treated that way by the company. ;-)

So onto the speakers - do they really work? Can you actually get decent audio from two satellite speakers lacking a sub-woofer? Prior to getting these speakers, I'd say no - you always need a sub. I'm no audiophile (I buy consumer-level audio products) but I do appreciate good-sounding audio and I always try to pick speakers that let the music sound the way it should sound. In my office I have a set of Logitech 5.1 speakers, and a pair of Klipsch 2.1 speakers, so adding a third pair of speakers with a sub-woofer was something I wanted to avoid (I'm setting up a new workstation for media editing). I dislike having to toggle switches/cables, so I didn't want to run multiple cables into a single set of speakers either. That's why I decided to give these GigaWorks T20's a try: they're small enough to not get in the way, and I was hopeful they'd kick out some decent sound because they have ports on the top (BasXPort™) for bass signal.

I hooked up my Zune and took 'em for a spin. Could I tell there was no sub-woofer? Yes. But did I hear a surprising amount of bass anyway? Yes. The BasXPort™ really does move air - on a song with strong bass I could feel strong puffs of air coming from the top of the speakers. The mids and highs are crisp, and the speakers kicked out a surprising amount of volume while still sounding clear. Let me be clear: these are sub $100 speakers, and don't stand up to my Klipsch speakers - but those Klipsch speakers cost me more than twice as much. There's a full review of these speakers by IGN.com worth reading if you'd like to know more. For my money, and for my space requirements, the Creative GigaWorks T20 speakers do the trick (low price search).