Dell AS501 SoundBar 2 Speakers

I decided to buy this sound bar because I have the LCD monitor that it belonged to. The LCD looked incomplete without it and the price that I purchased for was unbeatable. I like it because it makes the LCD look complete and it was easy to install.

This is a device that attaches to most recent model Dell monitors, and gives them the ability to play sounds. What can I say? It performs its function.

The speaker definitely matches the look of my 2408WFP. It is smaller than it looks (maybe 14 inches across and a little more than an inch tall). It locks into latches on the bottom of your monitor, so if your monitor has height adjustment, it may no longer be possible to make the monitor go quite so low, although this wasn't a problem for me.

The speaker has a 4 or 5 foot cord ending in a headphone jack. It has 2 headphone ports on the speaker so that you and a friend can listen to your computer in private. There is also a volume/power knob. One of the cool things about this speaker is that it turns itself on and off with your monitor. I find this nice, but if you listen to music while your monitor is off, you may not like it at all.

Since it is only a 2W (1W x 2 for stereo) speaker set, it does not get very loud at all. Even at max volume, you will probably struggle to hear it over background conversation. In a quieter room, it will be plenty loud enough. The sound quality is better than laptop speakers, but worse than a real speaker system. There doesn't seem to be any distortion even at full volume (which is not that loud).