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| Thermaltake Xpeaker Panel |
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| Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov | |
| Wednesday, 13 June 2007 | |
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Thermaltake has pioneered the expansion bay gadget-filler market for years now. They were among the first to introduce hybrid rheostat/temperature monitoring 5.25" panels. Their HardCano series has gone through numerous revisions with the latest release being the HardCano 13. But the company didn't stop there. Several other accessories exist like the CircleFire, the Xcontroller, the Xray, and today's candidate: the Xpeaker. Computer modifications, ranging from simple non-standard LED colors to cathodes and elaborate UV setups are about as common as sport exhausts. The folks at Tt are aware of this and are creating every imaginable device that can fit in a 5.25" bay while still being useful, all in the name of building a unique machine.
Hooking up external speakers only adds to the cable clutter and has little benefit and this is where the Xpeaker fits in: it's a completely portable unit that requires only one external hookup (to the audio jack of your sound card). Thermaltake also stresses LAN party use, though I have to disagree here. It's common knowledge (and courtesy) that headphones are a LANner's best friend. You do not want to annoy everyone around you by using external speakers; it's just rude. Anyhow, it comes in the retail package shown above and requires very minimal installation and absolutely no assembly.
Both the bass and power controls (left and right, respectively) are buttons; the volume control is a knob. It's bulky enough for larger fingers but for some reason it has no grips on it whatsoever. It's a bit more difficult to turn that most rheostat dials as well. All of this means that if you've been munching down on chips and forgot to wipe the grease of your hands, you can forget changing the sound levels altogether. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 25 July 2007 ) |
