PC speakers should not only sound good, but they should also look stylish. LED lighting in particular is at the top of the list of criteria that many buyers clearly use to make their choice. With the new 2.0 speaker QR65, Edifier now combines an extremely stylish design with a special type of LED lighting and good sound in one speaker model. In addition to a direct connection to a PC or laptop, the high-quality speakers also offer Bluetooth for pairing with a smartphone and charging other devices via USB-A and -C. We checked whether the high-quality boxes are worth their hefty price.
What are the key features of the Edifier QR65?
- Very high quality design
- infinite led lighting
- USB-C for charging other devices
- Bluetooth, line-in and USB A
- Sub Output
The Edifier QR65 is available in white and black 295 euros,
What does the Edifier QR65 look like?
In terms of size, the Edifier QR65 are quite traditional speakers. With a height of just over 20 cm, they fall into the category of bookshelf speakers, but can still fit on a desk. They get a little bigger with the included aluminum stands, which ensure that the speakers point slightly upwards and thus towards the PC user. The stands are of high quality and have “A Passion for Sound” written on the front.
The excellent workmanship is immediately noticeable on the shelf and desk. The speaker has a mid-woofer and a tweeter on the front, placed one above the other in a glossy front panel. Only in action does it become clear that this is a thick plexiglass plate that is partially transparent. Instead of the technology inside, the user sees countless LED rings that are lost in the depths of the housing. In fact, this effect is achieved through clever reflections, also known as infinity mirrors. It looks great, especially from a slight angle.
The rest of the workmanship is also excellent. Edifier covers the speaker with a plastic that is very reminiscent of Marshall guitar amplifiers and thus creates a further connection with the music. On the back you can see the connection options and a power switch in addition to a large bass reflex opening.
What connection options are available with the Edifier QR65?
Power comes to the speaker via a connection cable; the power supply unit is located in the speaker. Both speakers are connected to each other using a special cable that is over 1.5 meters long. If necessary, the speaker can be connected to a PC or laptop using the included line-in cable, there is also a sub-out cable for connecting an external subwoofer. Alternatively, connection via Bluetooth 5.3 or USB A is used, so that the QR65 becomes a party box using a smartphone. In addition to the USB-A port, there are also two USB-C ports that can be used to charge other devices up to 65 watts.
In addition to a power button on the side, with which you can switch the speaker to standby and thus turn off the LED lighting and switch between Bluetooth, USB and line-in, the main speaker also has two pressable rotary controls. The upper one controls the volume and, when using Bluetooth, the start and end of the music, the lower one controls the brightness of the LED lighting and the display format. Unfortunately, there is no direct access to the desired color; instead, some display forms (such as pulsating, slow thread or flashing to the beat of the music) also offer additional shades of blue or red in addition to the typical purple. This only works via the Edifier Conex app. There is also access to some sound presets and a graphic equalizer, which can be used to boost the bass separately from the treble. You can also see which device is currently charging on which USB port at what speed and the playback quality can be enhanced from standard to 24-bit and 96kHz via LDAC.
Shockingly, although static colours can be chosen and set in the app, they often have little in common with the colours displayed. For example, if you choose yellow, it looks more like white, while red is always slightly pink. But if you go to “More” under Lighting Effects and download the gradient effect, you’ll be rewarded with deeper colours – including yellow and dark red.
All pictures of Edifier QR65
Edifier QR65
How does the Edifier QR65 sound?
Visually, the Edifier QR65 comes across very positively – and when it comes to sound? We have to make a distinction here: When we took it straight out of the box and connected, we were initially a little disappointed by the lack of volume and bass. The only thing we really liked here was the very clear sound. However, two things have brought a significant improvement: by playing for several hours at room sound, the speakers have become noticeably more stable and now reproduce more bass. The latter can be set via the app and LDAC can also be activated as already mentioned, which ensures a further improvement in sound. After setting these up, we are now convinced of the speaker, especially since Bluetooth reception is very good.
Despite the impressive 70 Watt RMS (made up of 2x 15 Watt tweeters and 2x 20 Watt mid-woofers), their volume is still not enough to hold a party, but that is not the main task of a PC speaker. Instead, they should sound good – and they undoubtedly do. This makes listening to music really fun. They impress with their very clear and differentiated sound, which produces a good amount of depth even for their size using the equalizer in the app. However, we would also recommend a subwoofer as a PC speaker or especially for bass-heavy music, as the QR65 only plays around 50 Hz. We found it surprising that the QR65 is not much inferior to the much cheaper and smaller Edifier G2000 (test report) in terms of volume. However, the difference in sound quality is clearly audible, although for a PC speaker the G2000 surprised us positively.
price
The Edifier QR65 is available in white and black 295 euros. The manufacturer’s RRP is a high 300 euros. Our price widget shows more cheap and popular PC speakers:
conclusion
The design, workmanship and overall look of the Edifier QR65 completely impressed us. The faux leather and infinity mirror are completely different from most speakers in the market. The app allows you to adjust not only the sound but also the LED lighting and is therefore quite relevant.
After some adjustments and especially recording, the sound is really good. The bottom line is that the volume is not enough to provide sound for a party – given the size of the speaker and especially the price, this is really our biggest criticism. The latter is really our biggest criticism: as stylish as the speaker is and as good as the sound is, it should have been 50 to 100 euros less.
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