Genius SP-D150 Notebook Speakers sound and look great

The Speakers, the Setup and the Sounds

Here is the SP-D150 box. Although the box looks like it was hit by the delivery truck, the contents were undamaged. On the box, ‘Cubed’ and ‘USB Powered’ are emphasized. Also pictured is the other side of the box which has the the speakers’ features in English and several other languages. The end flaps give you a further illustration of connecting to a portable unit. One end flap has the specifications which includes the frequency response of from 147Hz to 17,500Hz (at -20db). The contents are well-packed for shipping and both pairs arrived in perfect shape and ready to plug in and listen to music. There is a quick installation guide which shows the end user how to set up for music.

The two speakers compliment each other and the left side has the volume knob and line-in and USB cable where it gets its power from your device as it contains no amplifier to power both speakers. The peak RMS power draw at 10% distortion is 4W (usually measured at the speakers’ maximum loudness), so these speakers are probably using less than 1W of power continually at normal listening volumes. However, please note that playing them loudly will probably drain your device’s battery much more quickly than using its built-in speakers.

The pyramid bottom of the speakers are as wide as the speakers for extreme stability and they have plastic grips which keep them from sliding and from scratching the furniture.The back of the speakers have the bass reflex ports – they are plastic tubes molded into the hollow speakers and they act to reinforce the bass produced inside the speaker boxes with the bass produced outside by the speaker directly. The left speaker is hardwired to connect to the right speaker.

Installing the speakers is simple. Plug in the jack and the USB connector; adjust the volume knob and play music, a movie, or a game. Check your setup and make sure that you have the highest quality sound available under Windows. Here is the test notebook’s integrated sound at its highest settings. Next set up your speakers. You will choose 2-speaker stereo. There is one issue that we discovered that may be a problem for some users. The speaker wire and the connecting cables are quite short. It is no problem if the speakers are placed next to the PC or device.

Listening Tests

For our listening tests, we used the speakers daily for everything audio-related including hours of gaming. Playing XCOM Enemy Unknown for many hours required the gamer to constantly listen for audio clues of alien activity, and sensing accurate sound directionality saved a lot of time in hunting them. For music, we used the well-recorded DVDs of Steely Dan and Carlos Santana that this editor is very familiar with. We also compared with our $50 pair of the much larger Genius 2-way, 3 speaker system, HF-800A. Of course, we ran the usual audio synthetic tests and naturally they showed some differences but they absolutely cannot tell you how either of the speaker systems actually sound when playing music. That is what trained ears are for!

First up, we compared our Genius fifty dollar pair of speakers, the SP-HF800A. For music, the larger Genius speakers sound better overall depending on what kind of music that you play. If it requires heavy bass, then you would probably prefer a system with a subwoofer. For Jazz and for general listening including gaming, the small Genius SP-150A speakers were clear and not tiring, even over extended sessions.

Both speakers gave a good stereo stage with fair imaging and slightly more bass than one would expect for their small size. The small SP-D150 speakers sit fixed on their stands and tilt upward angling the sound toward the listener if placed to either side of a device or a PC display.

Of course, neither of these systems are “audiophile” and they are not close to high-end, yet both sets of the Genius speakers can reproduce music very decently – each over their range with no bad surprises. A gamer has no trouble distinguishing positional audio precisely, and for music, imaging is good. For a seventeen dollar pair of great-looking PC speakers, we would have to say they sounded very good.