Philips MMS321 review

If you pay sixty quid for a set of speakers, you usually get a large 'subwoofer' for reproducing low, bass sounds, and smaller 'satellite' speakers for treble and mid-range.

While heavy bass is great for games, it doesn't always do music justice - and because recorded music is primarily designed for playback on a hi-fi, it sounds best on a system with two speakers.

Philips' MMS321 speakers are a stereo set aimed at producing balanced output suitable for music. Like most hi-fi speakers, they have multiple drivers - the vibrating elements that produce sound - to cover the full frequency spectrum. This ensures that there are no frequencies that aren't reproduced.

The large bass drivers at the bottom ensure that the bass is properly integrated into the speakers' sound, which is even and crisp. They reproduced a range of music well, although high-pitched parts of a classical track sounded slightly artificial. In general, they sound every bit as good as the asking price would lead you to expect.

However, the power supply brick that comes with the MMS321s is quite bulky. Oddly, the audio input from your PC goes into the brick rather than one of the speakers. If you want to keep the power supply under your desk and your PC on top, this can lead to some needlessly involved wiring.

The right speaker has a rotating volume control surrounded by an attractive blue glowing ring. The grip is a tiny nub, though, and there's no easy way to see at a glance how high the volume is set. It would have been nice if the light had been used to indicate the sound level instead of being purely decorative.

These speakers also didn't go as loud as we'd have liked. We could crank them all the way up in the Buyer offices without raising an eyebrow, though, given their compact size, this isn't surprising. If you're listening to music over background noise, especially if it's a style such as classical that ranges widely in volume, this could bother you.

If you want a pair of quality stereo speakers specifically for music, and you'll be listening in a quiet environment, these are a good choice.