One of the things no geek can ever get enough of is entertainment, if you want a good quality entertainment package either from your tele / PC, you need a crucial component not worth sacrificing – sound system. We recently received one of Creative’s mid-price range speaker systems, the Inspire S2. Its a 2.1 setup and some of you may have seen its non-wireless equipped version, this system however has been packed with bluetooth connectivity, so here’s our quick review and overall impression of the system.

Design

The Creative Inspire S2 is a slick speaker system, the largest of its three components is the Direct Throw Subwoofer. While it is a wireless speaker system, one may have thought that even its speakers are completely wire-free (as official images seem to suggest), this is in fact not true. The below pictures may demonstrate this better.

The two small speakers are connected to the subwoofer through separate cables, more importantly, the right speaker’s cable is fixed to the subwoofer, this cannot be removed or unplugged. This is not the case for the left speaker, but it too is plugged to the back of the subwoofer. This rather ‘fixed’ nature of the speaker makes the Inspire S2 not so convenient or mobile for moving or handling.

Putting the wires aside, the speaker system is overall well designed and relatively compact. Your external music source (if not bluetooth compatible) can be connected to the right speaker’s aux inlet, this is also where you would connect your headphones.

Around the back of the subwoofer, this is what you would find. It has a knob which allows you to adjust the amount of bass you’d like to get out of your music / movie / film / tele / gaming experience.

The Inspire S2 looks and feels stylish and well made. It doesn’t feel like cheap plastic and gives you a sense that your money’s been well spent.

Features

Putting aside the not so cordless setup of the Inspire S2. The idea of having a bluetooth equipped wireless system is that you’d place the speakers in a fixed location where you’ll be able to leave it and forget about it and then have the freedom to move your laptop / mobile phone around the room and not have to worry about being attached to a set of speakers. We think the Inspire S2 does this fairly well.

The Inspire S2 comes with a tiny USB dongle for your computer, drivers automatically install themselves on both Windows and Mac OS X. All that needs to be done in the audio settings menu is tell your computer to output sound through the Bluetooth connection. This is supported for up to 30 feet away, once that’s set up, the dongle should automatically connect to the speakers. Here’s a screenshot of how this is done if you’re a Mac user.

The good thing about having a bluetooth compatible system is that you can link any A2DP supported bluetooth device, these include the iPhone 3GS, the new iPod Touch and many new generation mobile phones. This means you’re not limited to using the USB dongle and therefore just your computer as a sound source but any other supported device. We have to be honest and admit that we have so far been very impressed with the overall performance of the Inspire S2. If you were not to see the speakers as well as the subwoofer, you wouldn’t have been able to guess how small and compact the system was. The amount of bass you get from the S2′s 17 watts RMS subwoofer in our view does not correlate with what you anticipate from a 2.1 system of its size. While this is obviously dependent on individual needs, we felt it was more than satisfying to have the Inspire S2 power our film / gaming needs in a medium-sized lounge. The only thing which we thought could have made our experience even better was possibly a remote control!

Conclusion

While there is one very obvious downfall to the Inspire S2, we think the quality and performance you get in return are well worth your money. If however, you don’t think you’ll greatly benefit from the bluetooth wireless connectivity, we do recommend you check out the non-wireless version of the Inspire S2 which was released concurrently in Sept 2009, as you’re looking at a possible saving of up to £70 – a real deal! If you’re not particularly fond of Creative, another 2.1 speaker system worth looking into (that’s also wired) is the Logitech Z323 which was launched at around the same time as the Inspire S2 and have received good feedback for its affordability and quality.

Pros

• Elegant, simple and compact design
• Lightweight
• More bass than you would expect from its size
• Clear crisp quality sound
• Bluetooth connectivity
• Supports auxillary

Cons

• Satelite speakers are not wireless
• Right speaker not detachable
• Having bluetooth makes the Inspire S2 rather pricey compared to similar 2.1 speaker systems of its size
• Lack of remote control

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