Manufacturer: Logitech Website: Logitech Z-340 Price: USD $49.99 Author: Brian Lee Page: 3

This is the right speaker unit.  It features a cloth grill covering the driver inside.  The base is made of satin finished aluminum and has rubber feet so it won't slide around your desk.  On the back of the right speaker are three cables.  One connects to the subwoofer, the second connects to the sound card, and the third connects to the left speaker.  On the front of the speaker are the controls and interface.  The left most button is the power push button.  Left of that is a super bright blue LED.  I think this is a really cool part of the speaker, especially since the LED is so bright!  I'll have pictures of it later.  Left of the blue LED is a headphone port.  This is a nice feature so you don't have to go searching around the back of your computer to plug in your headphones for private listening.  You can just plug it into the easily accessible right speaker.  The very leftmost knob is the problematic volume knob.  There is a slight indent in the cone shaped knob so you can sort of tell where the volume is set at.  I say the knob is problematic because it is difficult to turn and gives you little feedback on it's position.  I would have liked to seen a smooth positive action knob that gave better tactile feedback.

This is the left speaker.  No knobs or indicators on the front and only a single cable in the back that connects to the right speaker.

Here are the right and left speakers together.

In the following pictures, I try to capture the brightness of the blue LED.  The first picture is a bit off axis so the LED isn't very bright at all.  The second and third picture really show the intensity of the LED.

In order to evaluate these speakers, I compared them to my Harman Kardon 695 that came with my Dell 4400.  Yes, I got a Dell.  So shoot me.  In the right picture, you can see the Logitech subwoofer in front of the Harman Kardon sub.  Okay, quick confession.  For the past 2 years I have been using an Altec Lansing 295 satellite subwoofer system.  On that system, the subwoofer was a wide horizontal box that made a perfect foot rest. A few months ago when I got the Dell 4400, I moved the Altec Lansing system to my apartment and installed the Harman Kardon speaker system at home.  You can't tell from the picture, but on top of the HK sub are three controls that set the sub volume, bass, treble, etc.  This is bad.  After 2 years of putting my feet up on the Altec Lansing, I found that I had the habit of trying to rest my feet on top of the HK sub which is awkwardly shaped for foot resting and in the process, knocked out all the settings.  So the reason I bought this Logitech speaker system is because it has a flat subwoofer that I can rest my feet on.  In essence, I bought a foot rest primarily and a good sounding speaker system secondarily.  Don't you love it when things all work out?

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