Monolith MM-3 Powered Multimedia Speakers - Black (Pair) with AptX Bluetooth, Fron Headphone Jack, Digital Calss D

I don't write reviews too often, but I had to say something about these little speakers, because I was blown away by the sound quality. For the price, I think they will be hard to beat. Monoprice brand is known for higher quality at a lower price, and these definitely follow that same trend. I got these from amazon warehouse for $120, and they are incredible at that price point, especially considering their size. I purchased a few other options on amazon for around the $80-100 range, which were returned because i was underwhelmed by them. These sound 10x better than the ones i tried, which were all about the same physical size. I am a music producer in my spare time, but needed something small for my WFH setup, and these are the perfect blend of size, price, and sound quality.

For the past month I was on a search for a solid pair of speakers that would be small enough to fit on my 2 monitor desk set up. I didn't want to go all out with some super expensive speakers, but I didn't want another low quality pair of Logitech Z200s. After looking around for what feels like an eternity, there were two pairs of speakers I decided to test out. The Kanto YU2 and these Monolith MM-3. I ordered both and compared them against each other, and to see how much better they are to the Logitech Z200s. Both speakers destroyed the Logitechs in just about every way (except one which I'll talk about later). But when I compared the Kantos to MM-3, the MM-3 has overall better sound. Mainly in the bass. The Kanto YU2s sound great, but they have very weak bass, almost nonexistent bass. You would need some kind of sub-woofer for them. The MM-3 sounded about as good in mids and treble, but also had pretty good bass for how small they are. The YU2s are slightly smaller than the MM-3. I decided that they would be a keeper.The MM-3s are built pretty well, and they look nice. Another great thing is the light that indicates if they are on, isn't obnoxiously bright like it is on many other speakers. Overall I like them a lot. But there are some problems. One thing I was the speakers had was for the on/off switch to be in the front. It would make it so much easier to use and is something even the cheap Logitech Z200s had. My main issue is that my pair came with a broken stand. The speakers come with angled stands you put them on, so the sound is directed at you (this makes a big difference in how they sound compared to when they aren't facing your ears). Unfortunately the back piece that keeps the speaker from sliding off was broken before I ever used it.

Bangers

I like these speakers for the most part. These sound decent for desktop speakers but you won't want them for really loud tunes like if you wanted to connect them to a stereo or record player to play aloud in a large area. They will distort in a situation like that. I like these just fine for playing music while working from home and playing games. But I bought several sets of small white speakers at one time and tested them all out and this is the pair I kept. The only speaker I thought had clearer sound was the Audioengine A2+ speakers. HOWEVER, those speakers have ZERO bass whatsoever. They are literally just tweeters. That was a clear dealbreaker for me. These MM-3 speakers actually have real bass, better than any of the other speakers I tested.

I researched bookshelf speakers a lot, and eventually came down to these for its design and bang-for-buck. There aren't many reviews of this still, which made it a bit of a gamble, but I trusted Monoprice to put out a competent product.I really enjoy the sound quality of these speakers when listening at medium to high volume levels. I wanted a minimal setup, and was pleased at how these sound considering their size. The bass is even pretty good for not having a subwoofer.However, at low listening levels, there appears to be a point where all sound just completely cuts off, and the volume needs to hit a certain "threshold" for the speakers to play again. For example, when there is a low ambient noise like raining, and the raining sounds completely cut off if characters are not speaking due to the low volume of rain. This REALLY hurts the experience at low listening levels, and is especially distracting while watching videos or listening to music where a quiet part is occurring. No combination of changing Windows volume settings nor the knob on the speakers could fix this. The same occurs when connecting through Bluetooth with my phone or tablet, so it can't be the 3.5mm jack; sadly, it just seems the speaker is completely unable to play at low volumes. This means if I want all audio to play without the sudden cutoffs, I need to keep the speakers at a louder volume, but this is not ideal if I want to avoid disturbing or waking up folks.In the meantime, I'm forced to use headphones which sound fine in quiet moments and don't cut off. Even plugging in headphones to the speakers directly is fine, so something must be up with the speaker drivers themselves. I don't understand how this could be a problem, and I hope this could be easily fixed, because the speakers' tuning is overall quite nice.