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Provides: External audio for your computer
Developer: Altec Lansing
Requirements: Any Mac with 1/8" mini output
Retail Price: $99.95

Got a job for you, design some inexpensive personal speakers with clarity, nice bass, full sound, simple to set up, and oh yeah: make sure they look beautiful. Sure, why not.

I have to admit a certain amount of trepidation when I took these speakers out of the box. They were lighter in weight than I felt they should be if they were going to provide a full sound. It seemed too much of the weight of the box was used in the power adapter. The speakers themselves are a shiny, black plastic (Altec Lansing calls them "piano black") with a black nylon gauze-grill covering the front of the speakers. Standing a modest 10 inches tall, they are 5-1/4 inches wide and 3 inches deep. Seen below next to an iPod for size perspective, the door (to access the controls) on the right speaker is shown closed.

The power adapter is one of the "good" kind that has a normal electric cord on one side and a lower-voltage plug at the other with lots of cord on each end. I say the "good" kind of power adapter because my power strip does not have room for any more power adapters with the plug tines as part of the adapter. The power plugs into the back of the right speaker. Seen below, you can see the inputs for power, the left speaker, an auxiliary input (more on that later), and the main input from the computer.

The left speaker has an eight foot cord that plugs into the rear of the right speaker (to allow for wide separation of speakers). Lastly, there is a five foot, two-headed 1/8 inch plug cord that plugs into your computer, iPod or whatever, and the other end plugs into the back of the right speaker. Also included in the box is a 6 inch square black cloth to wipe dust and fingerprints off the shiny black plastic. Don't laugh—the cloth is very useful as shiny black plastic does a great job of displaying dust.

The last part of the setup is figuring where to stand the speakers. The basic idea is to place them an equal distance from where you will be listening, as there is no control to vary the sound volume between the speakers. You are now set up and can open the door to turn the speakers on.

The right speaker has a trap door that opens out and down. You can either close this door after setting your controls, or you can lift the speaker up and let the door finish rotating 270 degrees to hide against the bottom. Behind this door is the volume control, a bass and a treble control, and a headphone jack. The volume control is also the on/off switch for the speakers and is a separate volume control from any other source such as the volume control on your computer. It's perfectly safe to let the volume control remain on 24/7 when the computer is not in use. You may be wasting power, but it is a very, very small amount of power. Once turned on, the button used to open the door glows a cobalt blue.

I'm not a big fan of the controls on the 5020's design; I found them small and a little hard to reach. If you have large hands and/or fingers, it could be very difficult. I also found them a bit too hard to rotate—at least harder than I feel is necessary. The bass and treble control do have a nib at the mid-point that you can feel when rotating the nobs. The volume control has a click for the off position. Like most speaker systems with a single control for bass and treble (one each), you are likely to have more sound enjoyment if you set them both at the mid-point and use the equalizer built into iTunes.

As seen in the image above, after opening the door, the door lies flat on the table. Rising above the flat door is a small finger of plastic used to latch the door closed. Unfortunately, the easiest thing to grab to close the door is this small finger. As mentioned, the door can rotate up and into the bottom of the speaker. Shown below, you can see the door almost closed (for display purposes, I stopped the door from closing all the way with a piece of match stick).

Seen below with the door completely folded into the bottom of the speaker, you can see that the only thing to grab to pull the door back out is, once again, the little finger of plastic used to latch the door in the closed position. I feel it would have been better if Altec Lansing had provided a small notch in the bottom of the back to provide room to reach the edge of the door.

As mentioned earlier, on the back are two 1/8 inch jacks, one is listed at "Input" the other is listed as "Aux." You can plug two independent devices into these jacks: for example, your computer can be one of them and anything else can be the other. If you have both devices turned on (say on iPod and your computer), you will hear the sounds of both concurrently. I'm not at all sure I understand why there is a second 1/8 inch jack on this speaker system, but it's there. For what it's worth, I also question the location of the auxiliary jack. Keep in mind that it really doesn't make a difference which one you use. But, if you follow the instructions and place your computer into input, that means any other items will have to be aimed into the jack between the left speaker plug and the Input jack. As its use is more likely to be transitory, it makes more sense to me to reverse the auxiliary jacks with the input jack for easier access. If you find yourself in this situation, there is no reason for you to not simply plug the computer into the Aux jack and leave the Input jack available for other transitory devices.

Each speaker has a 1 inch tweeter and a 3 inch mid-bass driver. The bass is not pounding but very nice considering the size and weight of the speakers. Altec Lansing calls the technology behind the bass speakers MaxxBass Technology. You do get good bass out of this small package. The speakers are shielded so that you can easily place these right next to any other electrical device—such as a cathode ray tube monitor—and have no problems.

I listened to a wide range of sound types: folk, rock, opera and jazz. In each case, I was impressed but not knocked out. There was good clarity, but not a tremendous amount of depth. These are, after all, $99 speakers. If you want to be knocked out, you can spend $299 and get the Altec Lansing AT-6021 speakers (see my review).

For the techies, each speaker has a 1 inch horn-loaded tweeter and one 3 inch mid-bass driver. The frequency response is 90 - 20,000 Hz (-10dB) under 12 Watts RMS (6 Watts/channel @ 8 ohms) @ 1% THD @20 - 20,000 Hz). Signal to Noise Ratio @ 1 kHz input > 75 dB.

If you have an iMac and want to enhance the sound, these are fine speakers. If you have a G5 tower, a tin can would be an improvement on those speakers, so these would be heaven. In addition, if you want to pick these up and move them from the bedroom to the living room, for example, it's easy to grab and carry. Also, if you typically work on your Powerbook or iBook at a desk at home or work and wish to enhance your iTunes listening, this would also be a good match. Just leave the speakers sitting on the desk, unplug your computer, and go.

In short, for the price range and design, these are good speakers. I am not trying to "damn with feint praise" by that statement, only trying to not raise expectations more than is warranted. These speakers have a good sound, but I don't want anyone to purchase these expecting a cathedral experience; it's not going to happen. In addition, I like the fact that the door can be rotated completely out of the way, but I am concerned that the latch finger is a weak point and vulnerable to breaking off. On the other hand, the reality is that the vast majority of users will let the door rotate up underneath the speaker and never look at it again.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.