Sick of the neighbor’s lawnmower ruining your Outlast immersion, but can’t stand to have a headset weighing you down? Consider upgrading your desktop with Rosewill’s new SP-7260 speaker set.
Finding the right set of PC speakers can be a delicate triangulation between budget, desk space, and your personal level of audiophilia. Having owned everything from the cheapest available AmazonBasics speakers to more elaborate 5.1 setups, what impressed me most about the SP-7260 was its attractive design and solid performance across a wide range of media.
The SP-7260 speaker system is currently available on Newegg for $69.99. The speakers currently have a score of 4 out of 5 eggs and 20 total reviews.
Classic Design
Black wooden boxes, metal grilles and gold accents add up to the SP-7260’s classic bookshelf-style form factor. It’s a style not often seen in the PC speaker market, which is dominated by black plastic housing and taller, more narrow designs with less powerful drivers. But if you’re willing to sacrifice a little more desk- or shelf-space for the SP-7260, you get a big upgrade in sound quality.
Compared to most PC speakers out there, the SP-7260 boasts tweeters the size of woofers and woofers the size of your fist. Although they’re marketed specifically as gaming speakers (a lich king shoots lightning at the speakers in the promotional art), I found that the set performed equally well with games, music, movies, and podcasts. The 4” woofer and 1.5” tweeter allowed Neil deGrasse Tyson to pontificate without losing any of his deep gravitas, and handled synth-pop and trap music alike without dissolving into fuzz. Gamers won’t get the kind of surround-sound, play-with-your-eyes-closed experience that’s possible with a properly-positioned 5.1 set, but they can easily overpower any other sound in the room with full, high-fidelity tones.
Modern Functionality
What’s really nice about the SP-7260 is that in addition to audio specs and a price point that will seem standard to most folks with a bedroom/bookshelf speaker set, you also get a suite of modern features that bring the budget speaker set into the 21st century. In addition to the bog-standard side-mounted volume control knob, you also get knobs for bass and treble control, as well as headphone and AUX plugs on the same panel for easy access. And while most bookshelf-style speakers you’ll find still use the old-school red-and-black speaker wire, which can lead to questions of gauge and twist, the SP-7260 comes equipped with the trusty red-and-white RCA jack, compatible with most PC sound cards as well as other devices like game consoles and newer stereos.
In short, these speakers will satisfy just about anyone with a desire to upgrade their PC audio setup without spending a ton of money. For those who put a premium on desk-space, you may want to keep looking, as the slanted tops of the SP-7260 will make it slightly more challenging to display your Funko figures. Likewise, serious audiophiles and design obsessives will spend more on high-quality reference speakers and units with interchangeable surface features (the grilles here are non-removable). But for the rest of us, the SP-7260 sets a new standard for solid, across-the-board audio quality and up-to-date functionality at a reasonable price.
See more of the Rosewill SP-7260 speaker system in action in our Autonomous Smartdesk feature and on GameCrate as part of the Doom Slayer GameFrame.
