Teufel Concept E 100 Control 5.1 surround sound speaker system with controlstation

A decent set of computer speakers can cost as little as £40, so can it be worth spending more than £200 on a set?

People will spend a lot of money on living-room audio, but given that modern computers are capable of producing very high quality sound, it makes sense to consider better-quality speakers for the computer room too.

The Concept E 100 Control set from Teufel is a 5.1 surround sound set, which means it has five speakers that sit around your room and a single ‘sub-woofer' to provide bass sounds (which is the .1 referred to in the description).

It has a single input that takes six phono audio inputs – cables are provided to connect to your computer's headphone-style sockets. Of course, the computer will need to have surround-sound output to take advantage of this, but most modern ones (the last five years) do – look for three or six coloured sockets on the back.

The sub-woofer doubles as an amplifier, so you don't need to connect it through a separate amp. Setting it up was simple enough – all the cables are supplied, but the speaker cables (to connect the five ‘satellite' speakers to the main unit) are supplied as one big length which you need to cut to suit. This makes it very flexible – the cables can be cut to suit the size of your room – but it's a bit of a hassle. The units are a bit blocky but looked fairly good nonetheless.

Sound quality was excellent for music, films and games.

Although there's only one input on the speaker set, the ‘Control' in the name signifies that it comes with a separate input box, the Teufel Controlstation 2 (the Controlstation is available separately for £69 or the speaker set without it for £159).

This takes two stereo inputs and one surround one, and puts them through a single surround output into the speaker system - that way you can plug in two more stereo inputs as well as the computer. This worked well, and it can ‘upmix' the stereo outputs so they come through all six speakers, which also worked fine. It's a shame it can only take phono inputs, not optical ones, for instance.

In all, the Concept E 100 Control is an impressive computer speaker set that offers great surround sound from computers and other devices.