What laptop has the best speakers?

XPS 17 L702x has 2.1 22w speaker - is there any other laptop with better speakers?

(I think there are a few bang and olufsen laptop out there - but not sure if they're any good)

 

if you mean by best for sound reproduction, the only ones I know first hand are the M18x original, some sort of weird acer 18" unit from about 7 years ago and an old HP 17" from circa 2003. to be honest speakers in laptops really have not impressed me much ever.

 

Indeed - appears that different format factor leads to stand out sound.

 

Always been impressed with Alienware speakers.

 

I believe MSI has some of the better speakers for laptops.

 

The one you connect to proper bookshelf speakers /s

 

See:
http://www.cnet.com/news/magicos-heavy-metal-speakers/


But any gaming/workstation based notebook is not what you'd want as the 'source'.

 

the aorus speakers are very loud but sound bad.

 

MSI and their dynaudio speakers by far

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

Alienware and MSI have good speakers... Asus ones were quite good in G73JH/JW series not so good later on... The G750/751 seem to be quite good... Clevo isn't bad but a clear 4th place...

 

Yeah, only DTRs stand a chance these days of having decent built-in speakers that also cover the low end spectrum. With bulky plastic chassis replaced by sleek metal housings and HDDs and ODDs having to go super slim or home, there's not much room for innovative speaker configurations. Then again, even back when having a recognisable audio brand could mean aiming for a standout feature, things weren't always that great:

Yep, even if it is a bit sad that we may never hear anything far outdoing the original JBL with MaxxAudio speakers in the XPS line, I'm happy that the times of creaking, vibrating, and flexing plastic constructions are passing, and it's not like Lenovo (Y-series), Asus, Alienware, or MSI disappoint many:

 

For me, nobody makes suitable speakers in a laptop for quality audio. Either I use headphones with a headphone amplifier, or I use an external audio interface connected to quality high end audio gear.

 

I agree,

I have never found any notebook with good speakers. I use a bluetooth speaker setup.

my speakers have over 250watts of power with a giant subwoofer.

Sounds much better when watching movies online.

theres some cool 5.1 theater bt sets too I was thinking about.

bluetooth works great for speaker connections.

Amplified speakers with a subwoofer take too much power to hook up to a notebook. Bluetooth is the answer

 

In other words, the laptop with the best speakers is whichever laptop you've plugged into quality speakers at home/work/etc.

 

Ya got it!

 

no laptop has good speakers.

get yourself a nice headset for that purpose.

good luck

 

I don't agree. You can say the same for the display and then for the keyboard, and etc, and you'll end-up with a desktop. I'm not saying to expect miracles, but there are examples that show us that there is some sound to be get out of that tiny chassis. And BTW I have a quality receiver with nice 5.1 and also pretty nice head-set and because my internal speakers are TERRIBLE I have X-Mini Max II speakers as well. Sometimes you just NEED the sound on the go, and that's the whole point of having a laptop - portability. You don't need to carry all the extra stuff. Laptops can be made with pretty reasonable quality and power speakers. It's just that most manufacturers don't care that much (at all) about it. Hell, they didn't care about the displays up until recently (4K happened and everyone went bananas, while 6 years they were throwing crappy TNs all over the place), and you are looking at the damn thing the better half of the day, but that's another story.

 

That XPS 17 L702x looks interesting. 22W speakers in a laptop... that'd have quite the impact on battery life, but I'm sure it's meant to be used when plugged in most of the time. I'd be curious to hear it in person; while I haven't had a laptop with fantastic sound, I have heard the difference between respectable and terrible (the 8740w that triturbo and I have and I'm typing this on is in the latter category; I didn't buy it for the sound). So I'm curious what a really good laptop for sound would be like.

I'm also glad that when a laptop was my only computer, I had one with halfway decent audio. Although I must admit that I didn't buy it for that going in, so I didn't reward the halfway decent speakers economically on purpose.

 

1: Real Stereo requires 6"-10" of speaker separation. 2: Quality amplifier/preamplifier/integrated/receiver necessary. 3. Quality loudspeakers needed. 4. Quality audio interface needed. I do not listen to MP3. I listen to analog most of the time or better digital of CD resolution or higher. Bluetooth degrades sound quality further. I use McIntosh amplifiers and preamplifiers/tuners. I own Klipsch Chorus, The Advent Loudspeaker, and Dynaco A 25 loudspeakers. I have an HH Scott 312D FM tuner. I also own Otari MX 5050 B II half track open reel machines, and have a JVC KD-V6 cassette machine. I use turntables a great deal. With quality tonearms and cartridges. My equipment is maintained to specification or beyond. I am a broadcast engineer, my gear is maintained to the highest level of standard.

 

Find someone who owns an old ThinkPad A3* series and be prepared to cry...unfortunately, the rest of the architecture is so dated that these machines are almost unusable nowadays.

 

..on the other hand, I suppose we can probably agree that laptop speakers are a bit like "the world's fastest paper-airplane", and things like that. It's easy to appreciate both complex and simple paper-plane designs, and see how paper thickness affects the model, and how much more accurate you need to be with more delicate material, and so on. But they're never going to break the sound-barrier, and it's just supposed to fly gracefully over the lawn, not won't actually circle the globe, etc.

Having said that - a lot of thought and effort goes into sound amplification on low powered devices. Things like dynamic amplification strength, use of completely digital switches, and all the way to software design in some examples. In the sense that in the long-long ago, you needed about 45w to get a decent enough kitchen speaker to savage whatever tune you'd put into it. And now you can get a decent kitchen-player that savages any Sibelius recording in just 10w. And it sounds at least as horrible as the much bigger and more powerful kitchen-player from earlier. So yeah - a conscious laptop-designer would probably be able to put in a set of speakers that reproduce voice in low bitrate very clearly, for example. For radio and skype and so on. And another might pick a very accurate mid-level speaker that agrees with the curious modulation you often see in games. And someone else might actually try (and fail) to get something that will play music well enough. Actual music, I mean. Not noise with bar-lines. Anything can reproduce noise.

 

nipsen,

Average People today aren't as diligent about audio choices as they used to be.. Convenience and low price is more important than paying for quality. Most popular Asian brand audio declined in quality gradually from 1971 into 1980, and past that point horribly. People used to expect 10 or more years of lifespan out of their audio gear and it be repairable, rather than throwaway. My standards for audio quality are simple, I demand extremely high quality, accurate sonics. No subwoofers, no 5.1 or higher dumbed down sound quality for special effects, or IC based amplifiers. I use vacuum tubes or discrete transistors as much as possible which is built to be repairable if issues arise. Which sounds excellent, and is built to last. It is bad when McIntosh supports my over 40 year old gear better than most companies support in warranty new gear. I demand reliable. I demand the finest sound I can get for my budget. I have not just seen standards of build and reliability decline in just audio, but in camera gear, and in PC and Macintosh computers, to tie this discussion in with this forum's focus and emphasis.

 

I actually think that high-quality laptop speakers are irrelevant. Even if you put the best speakers you possibly can in a laptop, the sound quality will be drowned out by laptop fans (especially in gaming laptops).

So to echo a comment earlier... the laptops with the best speakers are the ones with (sound isolating) headphones / headset connected to it.

 

I am unworthy. And forgive me, for I have sinned. I have a marantz surround receiver that runs on digital input only. And sadly retired my quadrophonic receiver when it dawned on me that I would likely only ever own one single quadrophonic recording. And that downmixing and splitting channels from digital receivers is an expensive way to swindle the quadrophonic receiver. I do miss it, though. I miss it so very much.

 

Nothing wrong with current Marantz, theirs are among the finest of today's gear for sane money. A friend is a dealer. I get to hear their new gear often on demo. I even get to take some of it home. And Marantz professional CD players I use in broadcast work in production studios and on air, they work well.

 

Yeah, they're all right. And the setup I have is a good pick on a sane budget, as you say. Also really the only way to get new music, and to listen to film or play games, having something that gently handles digital input at high bitrates. But it's a bit like telling someone to.. quit coffee and just stick with energy drinks, isn't it. "It still got caffeine buddy, what's the difference?". If you've ever been spoilt with a discrete quadrophonic system with solid state amps, it's just not the same.

 

I guess we're far enough on a tangent that we might as well rename the thread, "Thoughts on notebooks with better-than-average audio".

The HP Pavilion zv5000z I bought in 2004 had dual forward-facing Harman/Kardon speakers inset into the front of its chassis. Those speakers had plenty of breathing room unlike today's ultra-thin notebooks which squash speakers inside the chassis; it was at least an inch thick by itself without the lid being closed. That notebook could fill a whole room with reasonable sound. I had it hooked up to a TV one time and couldn't get the audio to connect to the sound system (pre-HDMI woes), so I used the built-in speakers to entertain 4-5 people and it worked great. I still miss that notebook. (It had an AMD Athlon 64 3400+ processor which kicked the snot out of the Pentium IV, too. )

The most memorable notebook I reviewed from a sound perspective is this monstrosity, the Toshiba Qosmio X305 from 2008. Four big Harman/Kardon speakers and a subwoofer; it qualified as a portable semi-boombox. The X775 they replaced it with years later didn't quite measure up but was still head and shoulders superior to most notebooks.

My use of adjectives above is relative, of course; even an entry-level 2.0 setup would surpass near any "great" notebook setup. I think it's as @nipsen said: good notebook speakers are like the fastest paper airplane, which is neither impressive nor remotely competitive next to a real airplane, but nonetheless exciting to see what can be done within constraints. Personally I find something quite appealing about a notebook with a usable set of speakers. I like the simplistic elegance of having an all-in-one device that can do everything I want without having to rely on an external solution.

For fun - here is the notebook with the worst speakers I've "reviewed".

Charles

 

Exactly! Aren't laptops just that - a bunch of compromises? It can turn out pretty good with proper engineering. You wont win an award for best sounding device, but it can get the job done. Just like its keyboard, display, CPU, GPU and etc...

 

I remember seeing the X305 and X775 and both were huge.. Indeed, nowadays with the thinner notebooks, its just not possible however I'm happy with the speakers... I don't use them often and not that fussy, have a great headphones to use if needed....