If you’re a believer in the “out of box experience,” you’ll get a kick out of the packaging for the X2 Wireless Surround Speakers from Kempler and Strauss. The setup these speakers up could not have gone easier for me. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but I do get annoyed when a product doesn’t connect the way it’s supposed, or tech support tells me that there’s a problem with my system, or I need to upgrade for everything to work properly.

Again, that couldn’t have been farther from the experience with these speakers. As you can see, they’re very ergonomically pleasing, and the sound is pretty good, especially considering their small size, less than 2 in. high and about 2.4 oz. each. Even with such small size, the sound was pretty good, far better than I expected. The PMPO, or peak music power output, is a surprisingly high 150 W.

To configure the X2s, you push a button on either of the speakers to get them to pair with each other. Then, you pair them with the device you want to play music from. In my case, it was an iPad, and it was a piece of cake to connect everything. The music started to play instantly, and played on and on for more than 4 hours. Time for a full charge is about 2 hours.

The final (pleasant) surprise was the price of the speakers, just under $40. That also includes the sleek charging base. If you’re looking for stereo speakers to take on the road, you should give the X2s a look and listen.

eletter-02-05-2018