I am currently shopping around for some external speakers to make up for the horrible internal speaker(s) in my Acer Aspire 5749Z-4706 laptop. The thing is, I don’t quite know where I’d plug said speakers into the damned thing. One of the USB ports? The headphone jack? And as I’ve never bought external speakers before, I don’t know if there are any out there that may look great on paper, only to get them home and out of the box, only to find they’re incompatible.
I’ve futzed around on Google and on various retail websites (newegg, amazon, Best Buy, etc.) to no avail, so I’m reaching out to the Straight Dope. Any guidance for me? Any particular recommendations?
I don’t know anything about that particular notebook computer, but in general you can connect external speakers to the headphone or the USB port. However, I think few USB speakers include a subwoofer. Generally subwoofers need to be plugged into AC power.
finding ones that plug into the headphone jack are pretty generic. you want the speakers externally powered to sound nice. these can be used on anything including MP3 players.
you can also get speakers that get output from USB ports.
First of all, most external speakers will be better than those in your laptop. I have two sets (both requiring USB connectors and headphone jacks) giving me some okay sounds. I have accessories that mean the two USB connectors (for the power) go into one USB slot and the two headphone jacks go into one headphone slot.
To explain: (Speaker + Speaker = USB + Headphone) + (Speaker + Speaker = USB + Headphone)
They go to two 2:1 adapters so I only need to use one USB and one Headphone jack to get them both working. One set of speakers produce better base, the other is better at the higher frequencies. The sound is much better than my Lenovo laptop’s speakers (which, incidentally, are still much better than my previous Vaio’s), but are still no way better than if I’d spent more. I paid around $80 to get 10x better sound than my laptop speakers but I have several sets of earphones that cost more than that and use them daily.
So, get those that need a USB and headphone jack, and get a 2:1 converter for both if you want extra speakers.
Are you looking for speakers that will be portable, that you will lug aroound with your laptop, or just ones to use at home?
Any speakers small enough to be portable are likely to provide relatively poor sound quality (though still, no doubt, better than the built in ones). In speakers, subwoofers especially, size matters. But if you want portable you will need to think about how they will powered. USB will drain your computer’s battery, and will not give very much power. You could get ones to plug in, or with their own batteries.
If you do not need the speakers to be portable, you can get any of the same sort of speaker system that you would buy for a desktop computer, that will get power from the mains and sound from your laptop’s headphone jack. More expensive. and larger, will, on the whole, get you better sound.
If your laptop has an HDMI port, which many now do, you could also get a sound feed from that, but I doubt that there is any advantage to doing so if you do not want video too.
Also, it might be worth checking what your laptop’s sound ‘card’ is capable of before you buy expensive speakers that it can’t take full advantage of. This probably won’t be an issue, but it may be best to make sure.
Thanks, all of you, for the advice. Since I don’t need them to be portable, I’ll go with what njtt - and my gut - told me. But if I ever do want or need to go portable, and cans just won’t do, I’ll follow Justin’s advice.
Yes, it is quite unnecessary if you’re only going to be using them at home. I sometimes take the smaller set with me so needed one pair to be portable.
