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The subwoofer is finished in the same style as the satellites. It is twice the depth, about 4 inches taller and has a huge bass port on the right hand side of the chassis.
At the top of the subwoofer there is a jack in and microphone output port and two phone connectors. All the cables are supplied for this out of the box.
Below this is a socket for the pod control box.
At the bottom of the subwoofer are phono connectors for both satellite speakers and to the right is the power on/off switch and cable. It is very straightforward to connect the various items and Arctic Cooling supply a simple one page instruction list with diagrams.
The wired aluminum control pod is nicely designed with all functionality easily at hand. There is a rotor in the middle which operates the volume. Above this is a standby and a mute button. To the left are controls for raising and lowering the treble and bass. At the bottom are connectors for headphones and a microphone. This is handy as you won't need to get access to the rear of the subwoofer on a regular basis.
The rear of the control pod has two rubber pads on both the bottom and top sections to stop it slipping across a desk.
When the system is powered up, a semi circular blue LED lights up on the pod.
wow great price. I can never find their products here however, I hate seeing these reviews 🙁
Awesome. what a great price. you have to hand it to Arctic cooling for their pricing. same with their coolers.
Its the only reason I dislike my gigaworks speakers, although I dont have the revision 2. the bass is lacking. I know people say you dont need a subwoofer, but it really helps with smaller computer speakers.
Hey Zardon can you get the 632s to review? I like the look of them better (but these are good also).
I would also like to see the 632s reviewed, these are brilliant and for 10 euros more the higher model have even more power output.
Great review ! I didnt even know Arctic Cooling did speakers. id like more of them reviewed to get a view on the ones below this set and the most expensive set above them.
Meant to ask earlier, who is the OEM who makes these Zardon do you know?
I enjoyed reading the testing page. I agree, none of these speakers really get it ‘all right’ its a case of finding the best sound to your personal tastes and buying a value set.
These are much better than I expected. they look almost like a nice pair of studio monitors too. Shall be ordering a set when I can find them. Arctic Cooling REALLY need to work on UK distribution 🙁
I was beginning to wonder that these were in fact vaporware. Can anyone direct me to stores in Germany for these?
Cant find them here either (france). only one retailer shows them and its preorder. 🙁
Not sure how speakers with woolly bass, harsh treble and a tendency to add sibilance (so poor upper mid-range too) can get 9/10 and a Must Have. They look like the craptech stuff you normally see in budget electronics stores.
Great input there Taz. Clearly you just focused on the negatives and not the fact you could dial most of it out with the pod and the fact they are 80 euros.
Always great to see such well rounded and intelligent feedback, lol.
Hi Taz, they are far from the ‘usual craptech stuff’ you usually see in budget electronics stores. I am hyper critical of sound equipment however I don’t think it is best rating speakers in this price sector against equipment at thousands of pounds. I have heard many seperates systems which would have wooly bass, sibliance issues and even focusing problems on various levels (costing much more than these), but its all based strictly on the pricepoint. At the 80 euros price point there are very few speaker systems for PC’s which offer a fairly well rounded experience.
it is important to mention issues with any product, but I find even the award winning Creative gigaworks T40 v2 to have issues with various frequencies and they also have a complete lack of bass response. WIth all of these systems you get what you pay for and its possible to compensate to various degrees. With these you can dial out some of the issues to various levels, but with other products you can’t add bass depth which isn’t there in the first place.
I have yet to hear any computer based speakers id be totally happy with, so the price is an important factor. three other people who heard these were extremely impressed with the sound quality and wouldn’t even be able to point out sibliance or slight bass ‘booming’. Everyone has different ears and demands.
This is almost a 1year old review, but it really helped me to chose between Creative Gigaworks T20 v2 and the same priced Arctic S361.
You can’t correct something that isn’t there since the first time. I go with the 2.1 🙂
This was a superb, strict and informative review! thanks.
(first time reading a kitguru review. but not the last)
Thanks for comprehensive and informative review. I made a decision to buy the set and I am certainly not disappointed. The sound is indeed superb for such price.
What is confusing though is the technical specification of the whole thing provided by the manufacturer, which is quite slapdash. Details given on Arctic’s website say that total output is 58W (40W subwoofer + 18 W for satellites), but elsewhere they say 40W +2x18W (so 76W in total). I took the liberty of examining the set myself, and discovered that each satellite contains two loudspeakers, 10W each, and apparently no tweeter at all. So all in all it is 40W + 2x20W = 80W!
There is, it seems, quite a mess at Arctic Cooling in the advertising department – not to mention the typo they overlooked on the remote control (‘standyby’ instead of standby).
Perhaps underpricing is simply yet another thing they overlooked?
All in all, I am extremely happy with the purchase even if the build quality is a bit on a shoddy side. Still good value for money!