VR-Zone

If you've been on the hunt for a complete 5.1-channel speaker set that doesn't take up too much space or cost a small fortune, then you generally have a choice of Creative Labs or Logitech and the latter company has announced its latest addition in the shape of the Z906 speakers. This time around Logitech has focused the set to fit better in the living room rather than being a solution for PC audio, despite the old Z-5500's finding their way into many living rooms.

The design is completely revamped and we're looking at a much more AV friendly control unit this time around, as it's horizontal rather than vertical as was the case with the Z-5500's. Gone is the fancy LCD display, but in its place Logitech has added a range of easy to read orange LEDs which clearly indicates what's going on. You still get a remote control, but even that has been simplified and only features a power button, an input selector, a mute button and a four way navigation pad that also doubles up as volume controls and level and effect controls.

The inputs have also changed and rather than the control unit having the inputs, they're now located at the rear of the subwoofer. The Z-5500's featured three analogue inputs as well as an optical and a coaxial S/PDIF input and although the Z906's keeps the three analogue inputs and the coaxial S/PIDF, it scores a second optical S/PDIF input and two RCA connectors for stereo audio input. Logitech has also moved away from using RCA plugs for connecting the speakers to the subwoofer and has instead gone for traditional spring loaded clips and the same goes on the speakers. The good thing here is that if you're not satisfied with the supplied speaker cables, you can change them to whatever you want.

The Z906 speakers are rated at the same 500W RMS power as the Z-5500's, but the subwoofer has been down rated from 187W to 165W while all of the satellite speakers are rated at 67W whereas the Z-5500 satellites were rated at 61W with the exception of the centre speaker which was rated at 69W. All of the satellite speakers are wall mountable, although it does appear as if Logitech supplies the actual mounts in the box. The speakers are of course THX certified and the decoder handles Dolby Digital and DTS encoded audio and there's also support for up mixing stereo sound to surround sound.

The US MSRP of the Z906's is set at $399.99 which is about S$507, but we'd expect the set to cost closer to S$600 when it arrives in Singapore. Logitech expects to be shipping the speakers this month in the US, although it's unclear as to when they'll be available in other parts of the world.

Source: Logitech