Creative I-Trigue L3450 review

Creative's I-Trigue L3450 is a 2.1 speaker system, with two stereo satellites and a sub-woofer.

The satellites look right at home sitting next to an iMac or PowerBook. There's another version of this system available, called the L3500. This is designed in black and the satellites are a slightly different shape, but they're essentially the same product. The L3450 is aimed at design-conscious users and so is perfect for Mac users.

M-Port in a storm

Setting up the speakers is no problem. Everything plugs into the back of the subwoofer, including the satellites, the rather heavy power supply, and your Mac's audio output. Creative also supplies the speakers with a nice little remote control unit. This is solidly designed and has controls for volume and bass. It's also got a headphone socket and an audio input port, so you can plug an iPod into the remote control to play straight through the speakers.

The I-Trigue features what Creative refers to as the M-Port. This looks suspiciously like a FireWire port, and is designed to control other compatible Creative devices, such as the new MuVo NX.

Our only minor criticism here is of Creative's fondness for captive cables that are built into the body of the satellites. These cables are two metres long, which should be fine for most setups where the speakers are positioned on a desk close to your Mac. However you don't have the option of using longer cables if you want to move the speakers around a bit more, or if two metres of cabling is not enough.

Even so, the system as a whole is very well designed and built, and the quality of construction alone must help to account for the relatively high price of the setup. We were also very impressed by the sound quality.

Each satellite has two front-mounted Titanium cone drivers, plus a 'lateral firing transducer' - which means that there's another speaker driver pointing sideways and outwards from each. This ensures that the sound fills the area around the speakers very effectively, rather than creating a single 'sweet spot' right in front of them.

There's a total of nine Watts of output on each satellite, and the subwoofer adds another 30W. Extreme party animals might prefer a speaker system with a bit more in the way of raw power, but we didn't have any complaints. We had to keep the volume control well below maximum to avoid upsetting the neighbours, even when playing music straight off an iPod that was plugged into the audio socket on the remote control.

We were also pleased to learn that there was no signal disruption or distortion to speak of, regardless of what peripheral or computer to which the I-Trigue was connected.

Keep it clean

In fact, the most noticeable feature of this system is how clean its sound is. The speakers didn't distort once during our extended testing, even when pumped to maximum volume, which is testament to their solid construction. The subwoofer works well too, producing a nice solid sound without overwhelming the much smaller satellites.

At £110, the L3450 system clearly isn't the cheapest 2.1 system around. If you're on a budget then the 3300 system is a good (not to mention cheaper) alternative, but if you're looking for a high-quality setup to go with your iMac or iPod then this system fits the bill nicely.