Logitech Z600 Bluetooth speaker review: Excellent design and feature rich

Logitech isn’t the first name that pops up when you think of lifestyle laptop speaker systems. The company now has a new addition to their audio portfolio in the form of the Z600. This is a 2.0 speaker system with some handy features up its sleeve. Let’s see if it sounds as good as it looks.   Design and Build The speakers are well packaged and ship with the power adapter, a 3.5mm audio cable and a Bluetooth dongle for devices that don’t have Bluetooth integrated. The speakers themselves resemble the cooling tower of a nuclear reactor and weigh in at roughly 2kg, together. Each speaker has three drivers that are hidden behind a layer of fabric that’s wrapped around the length of the speaker. The third driver is bottom-firing and handles the low frequency sounds. The four rubber feet keep the speakers planted firmly on a table surface. [caption id=“attachment_218090” align=“alignnone” width=“768”] Exquisitely designed[/caption]   The Z600 also features flat, tangle-free cabling, with ample amount of cable length for you to comfortably place the speakers in any orientation. The only trouble is that the speakers tend to pick up dirt and grime very easily since it’s mostly made up of white plastic.   All the buttons and ports are placed in the back, which includes Bluetooth pairing, power, microUSB and auxiliary input. The volume control is handled by the touch sensitive dial on the top of the right speaker. There’s also a blue LED light here which is helpful while pairing the speakers to your device. There’s no built-in battery as these are predominantly desktop speakers and aren’t really designed with portability in mind. [caption id=“attachment_218092” align=“alignnone” width=“768”] The connectivity ports on the back[/caption]   Features One of the unique features of the Z600 is its ability to pair it to three devices at a time. To take over; you simply pause one device and start the other. We tried this with multiple phones and it works quite well. You can even use the 3.5mm audio jack to play some music if you don’t want to bother with pairing. There’s no NFC for pairing, which would have been a nice addition. Logitech doesn’t really mention any speaker details of the drivers or even the RMS output anywhere though. Performance Pairing the Z600 with any Bluetooth device is as simple as hitting the button on the back and accepting the connection on your phone. There’s ample amount of volume level to fill a large living room and the audio fidelity over Bluetooth is above average. We started with some classics like Hotel California by The Eagles, which was reproduced quiet accurately. The lower frequencies obviously don’t have the slam as you’d get with a dedicated woofer but it’s not too bad. A slight boost in the EQ settings helps quite a bit here. [caption id=“attachment_218093” align=“alignnone” width=“768”] The Z600’s produce excellent highs and mids but lacks a bit in bass[/caption]   The Z600’s also manage to reproduce a wide soundstage, which is especially helpful when listening to scores from motion pictures like the Dark Knight or Inception.  The speakers do well with almost any genres of music and there’s very little distortion even at the max volume.   Verdict and Price in India The Logitech Z600 is priced officially at Rs 12,995, but you can find them for as low as Rs 8,000 on online stores. While this is still a bit steep for a pair of 2.0 speakers, it’s not too bad when you take into account the good audio quality, the ability to pair with multiple devices and the fact that they are lifestyle speakers. Our biggest gripe is the fact that it lacks punch at the lower frequency range. NFC would have also been a nice addition. Apart from these, the Z600 are a good sounding speaker set with equally good looks to match.