I am a big user of headphones, mainly because I try to reduce the amount of noise I inflict to my family. But sometimes it's nice to have some big sound coming off your gaming rig - be it a laptop/desktop or a gaming console.
For those times, the JBL Quantum Duo is a pretty good deal. It's flexible on how you can connect to your devices, sounds good and has a fun colour component to it.
The JBL Quantum Duo comes as two speakers packing a 2.5" woofer and a 0.75" tweeter on a relatively small (89 x 210 x 176 mm each) package that weighs 2.8 Kg in total. The rated output power according to specs is 20W RMS.
The speakers are black but they have built-in LED that you can use to create interesting visual combinations. The LED colour can be manually selected (with a choice of six colours) or can simply cycle through those colours. If you add one of the two light effects then you have some fun visuals going on with the action (in addition to solid colours you can select either a Wave or Flow effects to make the LEDs change colour on time with the sound going out).
You can connect the JBL Quantum Duo in a variety of ways - you can use the included 3.5" lead to connect to your sound card, mobile device or gaming console. An alternative is to connect via Bluetooth, which is quite convenient (at least one less pair of cables on your desk) or you can use a USB cable to connect it directly to your desktop/laptop and completely bypass the need for a sound card.
I've used the JBL Quantum Duo over Bluetooth with both my smartphone and Windows desktop - and it sounded great, even though the Bluetooth 4.2 stack doesn't support any high-end sound codec like AptX or similar.
The sound you get for those speakers is clear and easy to listen. It's not too heavy on the bass, but just enough. It works well with both music and games. And yes, I also played Borderlands 3 with those speakers and it sounded great - even over Bluetooth.
The USB installation on Windows is pretty painless if you are using the latest Windows 10. In this case, the operating system will automatically install the driver for the speakers from Windows Update servers as soon as you plug the USB cable and you will be ready to use it in a matter of seconds. If you are still running Windows 7, Windows 8 or earlier versions of Windows 10 then you will have to download the drivers from the official website.
The user interface is pretty simple, with dedicated buttons for each function: power on/off, Bluetooth pairing, colour selection, surround sound on/off, brightness and volume. It is all very intuitive and there are no mistakes here.
Also, if you still want to use a pair of headphones for those quiet moments, you can plug a 3.5" lead directly into an output located in the front of one of the speakers.
The box comes with a power cord, a 3.5" lead and a couple of USB cable - one used to connect the speakers to each other and another for connecting the speakers to a computer.
Ultimately the JBL Quantum Duo is an affordable pair of speakers with the good quality you expect from JBL and some fun visual effects.
