Altec Lansing Expressionist Ultra

The Altec Lansing Expressionist Ultra is a stereo speaker set with a sub-woofer (it's a 2.1 set in the industry jargon, the 2 referring to the speakers and the 1 to the bass sub-woofer unit).

The speaker units are an unorthodox design with spiky speaker cones and a transparent front section. This might make them a bit odd-looking on some desks or in some rooms but against a modern monitor or flat-screen TV they look good.

The sub-woofer unit, into which everything else plugs, is enormous at 16in (40cm) high and 15in (38cm) deep, making it too tall to go under our desk. The device has a standard stereo headphone input, with cables going from the sub-woofer to each of the speaker units.

There is a converter to attach a phono sound input, but there is no digital or optical connection, and we expected to find at least one more standard stereo input. The other units are a more sensible size.

There is a wired remote control, which is fine if you are using this as a computer speaker but the cable is a bit short for living-room use. The control does have an auxiliary input as well as a headphone connection. There are controls to switch between adjusting overall volume, treble and bass but there is no mute button.

Sound quality was very impressive, as you might expect for a fairly expensive speaker set. Sound was very clear at all times, even at high volumes, and the bass response was good, as we expected with such a large sub-woofer.