The Logitech elicited a lot of comments from your reviewer right from the get-go, then again Logitech products almost always does. As someone who owns a Logitech Z-5300 5.1 speaker setup and uses it for daily computing, I was the natural choice to review the unit. This turns out to be true, but not for all the reasons you’d expect.

                                              Logitech stands for shiny black, desirable products.

Coming from a 5.1 setup to a 2.0 (no subwoofer!) should have been a deal-breaker, thankfully, this is not the case. The good impression starts with the box, which is sleek, accomplished, and looks high-end. This is no surprise, as this 2.0 setup retails for around P7000(!) – a detail that I’ll get back to in a bit. The box was quite heavy; a very good indication for speakers in general. The speakers themselves were beauts – glossy fronts fascias, large 3” main speakers/woofers topped by 1.5” tweeters, flat, touch-sensitive controls, solid base, and solid construction all around. These speakers are also quite massive; in addition to being heavy, their combined total frontal area is bigger than my poor 15” LCD’s viewable area – wink-wink, nudge-nudge to our office procurement.

                                             It's time for me to upgrade my work LCD...

                                             As well as being nigh-impossible to photograph properly, the silky black front attracted smudges easily - fortunately they were easy to remove too.

Going through the stated specs revealed not too many surprises – 30 watts RMS is divided between 14.8 watts x 2 to the woofers and 1.2 watts x 2 to the tweeters.  The touch-sensitive controls consist of 4 possible pre-sets under the main LCD, a “display” control that switches between display modes, forward, reverse, play and pause buttons, power, mute, a toggle for bass, volume and treble controls, and the volume controls. There is a front earphone socket, as well as an auxiliary input at the rear. A mini USB port(for the LCD info / secondary music input) rounds out the connections.

                                             Just two of the many different display options you can access directly.
 

Once I had the software installed and running, I had a sneaky feeling that I’ve seen the sequence of displays once before – I was right, it is exactly the same type of displays present on Logitech’s G-15 “Refresh” Gaming keyboard, which was reviewed a few months back. This consists of countdown/Stopwatch panel, Media display for showing song or media info, Date and Time display, and Performance Monitor for your memory and CPU Utilization. There are other options available from within the LCD setup menu, such as email client setup, brightness controls and inclusion/exclusion of display modes.  The LCD displayed all these in cool, amber-backed fashion – combined with the similarly amber controls, made for a stimulating visual experience (and this is from a speaker set, mind you). This would look great in my room, but then again P7k for a 2.0 setup shouldn’t just be justified by good looks – which is where the listening “tests” come in.

                                             Connections include USB for both data and tunes, an aux input, and a speaker-out.

The combined think-tank that is the HWM team nodded (head banged?) their collective noggins once the speaker set was cranked up – a quick succession of Guns n Roses, 90’s classics, Brownman Revival, and Beethoven created unasked feedback from the office at large (where’s the sub? How many watts is it rocking? What’s with those controls? Is that ID3 tagging for that LCD there?) A quick run-through of the questions give the following answers – there’s no subwoofer, its 30 watts RMS – and no ther’s no PMPO rating, those are touch sensitive controls, and yes, it uses software to grab tags off the songs being played – for most programs anyway.

                                             Touch-screen controls can be activated even without touching the glossy surface; capacitance at work.

Even coming from a full-on 5.1 setup at home, I could not help but admire the amount of sound this set produces – exactly the reason for its hefty construction (bigger internal volume = more air moved) Bass was more than noticeable, emanating from somewhere between my LCD screen and the twin tunnels of my nose (eww). Highs were somewhat teeny though – although that might have been the result of too many 128kbps bit-rate MP3’s. In certain tunes I noticed some kind of warbling – a problem that disappeared once I realized that I had the auxiliary input plugged in at the same time as my main USB connection (oops). Beethoven was where the Logitechs foundered a bit – cymbals and high wind instruments were obviously lost among the din as compared to a regular set of Sennheiser PX 100s – although it still sounded tremendous, overall output sounded somewhat muddied, as if part of the percussion section were behind thick curtains.

                                             The two speakers are connected to each other through a roughly 1-meter long cable.

                                             Ports at the rear is where the "deep downs" come out.

Gaming produced mixed results – dialogue and regular game portions were quite stunning especially for a 2.0 set, but strangely enough, explosions and deep bass were poorly rendered to this reviewer’s ears. In any case, the Z-10s are meant for music and light gaming, and my opinions are after all a bit flavored by my experience with Logitech’s own Z-5300s. Overall, two words can summarize the listening experience quite neatly: surprisingly good. As evidenced by questions like “where’s the sub” – this set’s bass response is orders of magnitude above a middling pair of 2.0 speakers – to the point that it is almost comparable to a full 5.1 setup. Although directional cues are obviously lost due to its two speaker setup, its music focus and above average performance almost justifies its high price – and if you’re the type to look at quality, looks, and brand cachet (as most of us are, I’m sure), the Logitech Z-10 2.0 speakers are a cut above the rest – just be ready to pony up a bit more moolah than usual.