I noticed that Electrohome had a special “early bird” deal on their new model of compact powered bookshelf speakers, so I took them up on their offer. There were two models available, the 20 watt Huntley and the 30 watt Berkeley; I got the Berkeley EB20s.
There are a lot of different brands and styles of compact powered bookshelf speakers that you can buy. Most of the ones I’ve seen on Amazon all have a similar look/style to them. All of them look very modern and impressive with their contoured shells and fancy speaker bezels. But when I saw Electrohome’s designs, they immediately resonated with me. They looked like speakers I would have owned back in the 70s and 80s, so they would fit right in with all the other retro electronics we have in our living room. Being a Canadian manufacturer of televisions and electronics (yes we used to make our own electronics in this country), Electrohome was a brand name commonly found in our household back then. Realistic was also popular in our home.
I ordered the speakers on a Monday and they arrived the following Friday. Quick! When I took them out of the well packaged box, they looked even better than they did in the photos on the website. I know it’s just “medium density fiberboard”, but that teak veneer finish is just so nice. From what I can tell, it’s similar real wood veneer they use on their other products, so it’s not just paper with wood grain printed on it.
The speakers are nice and solid, too; no creaking or flimsy plastic housing here. The woofers look like they’re good ones, too, being 3” polypropylene with butyl rubber surrounds. The tweeters are 1” silk soft domes. On the back, each speaker has a bass port, which really delivers some excellent bass during playback.
Speaking of the back, these speakers were really easy to set up. The right speaker contains the class D 30 watt integrated amplifier (which you plug in) and the two speakers are connected via a standard 22 gauge speaker wire. You are given three ways of connecting the speakers to your playback devices: L/R RCA jacks, 3mm aux. jack, and Bluetooth 5 pairing. You make your input selection via the control knob, which also controls volume level. Press the knob in to cycle through the input choices and the LED will change colour to reflect your choice; blue=Bluetooth, yellow=aux in, green=RCA, and red=standby. All very simple and intuitive.
The reason I bought these speakers was to hook them up to our media centre for watching our movies. Right now we have our mini LED video project and Neuros OSD plugged into one of those little CANZ 808 portable speakers, which has served us well. But, ever since watching “Lawrence of Arabia” on Laserdisc (which I got as as a Christmas gift this year), I wanted to boost the sound quality of our movie watching a bit. These Electrohome speakers seemed like they’d fit the bill perfectly. I can gladly say that they have, indeed.
The first movie I played was the one that I think has the greatest title score of all time, “Superman The Movie” on DVD. Hearing that theme through these speakers was very satisfying. The amount of bass that these little speakers could pump out was impressive. While the title score was playing, I put my hand an inch away from the rear bass port and could feel an awful lot of air being pushed out of there. I had the volume turned up a pretty good amount and I could not detect any distortion in the playback at all. The Berkeley’s did a really good job at filling the room with big movie sound with no distortion or “rattle-y” bass.
For good measure, we also fired up “Lawrence of Arabia” on Laserdisc. Boy, what an improvement over the CANZ 808! That opening title score sounded fantastic; almost as good as I remember hearing it on my Pioneer Pro-Logic 5.0 surround sound processor, before our “big move.”
We also tested the 3mm aux. in jack with one of our MP3 players plugged into it and to no surprise, the music sounded great. At first, the music playback did sound a bit muffled. But, then we turned off the MP3 player’s equalizer settings and that solved that problem. The Berkeley’s integrated amplifier is more than capable of handling any sound “equalization”, so we’ve learned to just turn off any such settings on the playback device when hooked up to these speakers.
Where could they be improved? Well, these are small things, but I would have liked to have a bit longer power cord. I was hoping to put these up a bit higher on a shelf than where I ended up putting them, but I didn’t have enough cord to reach the outlet. Also, because we rely on solar power, I’d much rather have a power switch to turn the speakers off when not in use, rather than a “stand by” mode. The stand by mode might not draw much power, but when you rely on a battery bank to power your household, everything that draws upon it counts. So, I have to unplug the speakers every evening, where an off switch would be much more convenient.
All in all, I say at $109 (CDN) these speakers are good value for money. But, with Electrohome’s current 60% rebate offer, they’re a real steal at $45! They look and sound great and seem to be well made with quality materials. I’m quite satisfied with my purchase.
A link to Electrohome’s website and the Berkeley speakers can be found here:
https://www.electrohome.com/berkeley-powered-bookshelf-speakers-eb20
I’d also like to add this bit of information regarding my experience as an Electrohome customer: their customer service is really professional. I’ve contacted them a few times over the years with questions and they’ve always responded promptly and professionally. They also seem very eager to please and address questions or issues to the customer’s satisfaction. This is something that I value very much. It’s nice to know that there still are companies out there that still hold to these values.
Be sure to check out my other Electrohome product reviews.
Side note: Just out of curiosity, if anyone reading this blog post is from the U.S., can you tell me if Electrohome products were ever sold in your area, or if you’ve even heard of them?
[tag]electrohome, speakers, review[/tag]