Kensington SX 3000R Flat Panel iPod Speakers

Reviews: Multimedia

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Kurtis Kronk
Brian
Kensington
Apr. 4, 2007

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Sound Quality

The Good

Juanes: A Dios Le Pido / La Camisa Negra, Carlos Vives: Fruta Fresca, Natasha Bedingfield: Unwritten, Joe Cocker: You are so Beautiful, Celine Dion: Miracle, Frou Frou: Let Go, Imogen Heap: Hide And Seek, Evanescence: Lithium / Your Star, Papa Roach: Last Resort / Broken Home, Akon: The Rain / Mama Africa

Songs like these do a great job of showcasing the NXT flat panel loudspeaker implemented in Kensington's SX 3000R. The mids sound really nice with the highs sounding good though a little weak. When bass takes a backseat to all the other sound elements, the speakers' major weakness becomes a non-issue.

The Bad

Kanye West: Gold Digger, The Pussycat Dolls: Buttons, Nelly Furtado: Say it Right, Akon: I Wanna Love You, Linkin Park: Lying From You

There are just some types of music that are going to suffer on these speakers, and this is to be expected honestly, unless you've got some decent sized and sufficiently-powered drivers. Bass is most definitely the Achilles heel of Kensington's SX 3000R. Sometimes the bass isn't all that bad if it's not really deep, and sometimes it is just totally missing (in which case I know it should be there and therefore miss it), but when it's there and it's bad, oh boy is it bad! For example, in Linkin Park's Lying From You, it sounds like somebody is beatboxing (pretty decent beatboxing, mind you) to lay down the bass track.

Overall

At the end of the day, the SX 3000R is a little better than your average iPod speakers and not as good as a pair of decent desktop speakers. Overall I found the sound quality to be acceptable and even good at times. One of the things NXT touts about their flat panel loudspeakers is room-filling sound and this certainly holds true - the SX 3000R can be turned up much louder than I would have expected, and while sound quality will degrade a little, it won't sound completely crappy at those high volume levels.

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Page 1: Introduction & First Impressions
Page 2: General Usage
Page 3: Sound Quality
Page 4: Conclusion

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