First off, I love the aesthetic of these speakers. The white and black with subtle carbon fiber-esque checkering is great.

These are super convenient to set up - still more work and cables than a USB soundbar, but well worth the upgrade, and notably easier to set up than passive speakers with a separate amplifier or systems with a subwoofer.

That said, of course these won't cover the same frequency spectrum as a subwoofer or headphones. They do a respectable job with the bass frequencies for the price and convenience.

They come with soft pads underneath that help a bit with preventing scratches and isolating sound from your desk, which is a nice touch. I'd still recommend adding foam isolation pads underneath to improve this more.

For making music, these are usable in a bedroom on a tight budget, but don't quite do it. I end up using headphones much more for any sort of mixing. This may be in part due to my room sound but there's an annoying bump in the low-mid frequency range, and not quite enough low bass (which is fine for speakers this size) or high treble.

While using this for gaming and such, my biggest pet peeve is the volume control. It's very conveniently placed, but works in stepped increments rather than smooth adjustment. Instead of dialing in the volume quite right, you might end up with one notch being slightly too quiet, and the next slightly too loud. You can then dial it in in Windows, but that undoes the convenience in the first place.

Overall these are still quite nice for regular use at such a low price, just be aware that of the small issues they do have.

Got these as an addition to my home office to listen to music while I work, and help with video editing without needing to have my headphones on all day. They work perfectly and have a surprisingly good response. I have them in a small carpeted room with a large drape on the back wall and they sound terrific for their size. Don't think a subwoofer would be required unless you were trying to fill a large room. Not a perfect tone like a 300$ pair would be, but incredibly good and I'm sure amazing to an untrained ear.

So, there are two types of people who look at this product. The first is as an audiophile who is comparing this to speakers 2 or 3 times as expensive. The second is as a non-audiophile reaching up to this price point from the $40 Logitech speakers you've had since 2017 that get the job done, but you're ready for something better.

I have experience with the first type of person for headphones, but for desktop speakers, it's time to retire my old Logitechs.

Pros:

1. The sound quality, compared to my $40 Logitech speakers, is incredible. It's the same feeling I got when I got my first nice pair of over ear headphones after years of using those old Apple earbuds (not airpods, the wired earbuds they gave out with iPods lol). The sound is much clearer, the bass is punchier, and it's just overall better than the Logitech speakers.

2. The power button doubles as a studio/music profile switched. Red light means studio, green light means music. The green light one sounds better to me, provided you use the bass knob in the back to turn the bass down 3 or 4dB. Otherwise the bass gets a little boomy. But, I like the dual profiles, even if these are, in no way, good for actual studio use (although, to be fair to Edifier, they are vastly better than $50 desktop speakers for studio use lol, it's all about perspective when it comes to audio).

3. These are built for desktop use. Headphone jack in the front, RCA to 3.5mm cable in the box to plug into your PC tower, and they are active speakers, so you don't need any additional equipment to run them like you do with fully passive speakers.

4. Headphone jack is adequate. Won't beat a dedicated amp/dac, but they are on par with the jacks in your PC tower, which is fine, especially if your tower is really far away like mine and your headphones can be powered by a normal headphone jack.

5. Bass and treble knobs in the back are nice for fine tuning. Again, I turned the bass down a few dB to avoid boominess, and the treble stayed at default.

6. Speaker wire is long enough to get around a 34-inch ultrawide with about two feet of cable to spare, maybe more. These will fit around even larger monitors.

Neutral

1. I downloaded Equalizer APO to fine tune these just a little bit more. They sound very good out of the box, but I felt they needed a bit more tweaking. I recommend Equalizer APO to really dial in the sound you want.

2. Some folks may want to pair these with a subwoofer. I didn't find it necessary for casual desktop PC use (I also didn't want to deal with connecting a subwoofer to it, or spend anymore money lol), but if you do, it's not the worst idea in the world. The bass is gold enough for uber casual listening but it is another half step up to get a dedicated subwoofer to do it instead.

Cons

1. While these are vastly better, clearer, and more sonically competent than any sub $100 speakers I'm aware of, they do have their limitations. Instrument separation gets a little stuffy with big, complex music with lots of instruments. The bass is boomy out of the box (easy fix), and it'll distort when it gets loud enough on some songs. However, I had this up at 60% volume on both the speaker and Windows, and I'm never going any higher than that anyway lol.

2. The volume knob is a step/click style and not a smooth style, and the jumps in volume are surprisingly large. You'll likely need to use both your source volume and this thing's volume knob to get the right volume for you.

3. A front cover would've been nice, like you find on other Edifier speakers like the 1280DB. Not that I mind the bare speaker look, but still, would've been a nice option.

Overall, I'm very happy with my purchase. I've had nice headphones for ages (Sennheiser HD650 currently, and probably forever. If it ain't broke, don't fix it), but I still remember the Sennheiser HD558 as my entry level audiophile headphone that got me away from cheap headphones, and how I had that "I hear things in songs I know that I've never heard before" moment with them.

The Edifier MR4 is that same feeling stepping away from less expensive PC speakers. Yes, this is the ground floor of audiophilia, so it's not going to impress someone who already owns or has experienced higher end speakers. However, this is still a HUGE step up from the essentially any sub-$100 PC speaker, and that's all I was looking for.

It's nice to be able to get some reasonably good audio without needing to wear headphones.

These sound amazing. I can't stand low quality audio paired with high quality visuals when I'm gaming or watching a movie, I want to be immersed and properly enjoy the content. These speakers easily accomplish that task, and look great as they do it. Very well priced, to. If you're on the fence, go for it. You won't be disappointed.

I've spent days looking around for the right speaker and finally concluded this is one of the best duo speaker for it's budgeted price, solid wood build and 'good' audio quality.

The first thing I did when looking for a new audio system, be it computer speakers/headphones/earbuds is to always first look up and compare the FREQUENCY RANGE of said item. The lower the low and the higher the high = better audio sound quality. Once I figured that out I was able to sort through all the over priced 'meh' systems and compare the ones that shows promise to peer reviews by audio engineers.

By no means this is a fantastic speaker, I have headphones and wireless earbuds that are much better, but atlas I need a speaker to replace my broken one and I'm not willing to overspend.

Pros:
- Price
- Easy setup
- No background crackle/buzz noise when there's nothing played
- Quiet on and off
- 'Good Enough' freq range
- Made of quality wood
- Everything you need to set it up
- Not angled
- No flimsy plastic
- No 🌈 lights

Cons:
- It's a tad high for my taste ( 8.9" ) but I knew that before settling for this
- headphone jack audio quality

Now for those that reallllly want to audio-gasm and not totally break bank. I overwhelmingly suggest you to check out KRK classic 5. For the same price as these 2 speakers you can get 1 Studio Quality speaker that alot of studio engineers uses to calibrate their music with. I guarantee you will not find anything else within the same price range and hit the same audio quality without a 2X-4x price markup... Or better yet stick with wired headphones...