The folk at Rosewill were kind enough to send over the Rosewill SP 7260 Gaming Speaker for us to review, and though I’m not an audiophile by any means, as a TV producer I work with and edit high fidelity audio on a daily basis. And as a gamer, well, we all know how important good audio is to the gaming experience; needless to say, I was eager to give these a listen.
Rosewill SP 7260 Gaming Speaker Review
This is the Rosewill SP-7260 2.0 system which I’ll be unboxing and reviewing for you guys today. It’s a dual speaker system, without a subwoofer (I have a sub in my current PC setup and it’s honestly more of an inconvenience for me personally. I prefer the 5.1 system in my living room. I tend to like more bass there when I’m watching movies or playing console games. Again, personal preference).
Now Rosewill has tried their hand at gaming speakers before, their now discontinued 2.1 system was apparently riddled with faults, see the Amazon reviews. While I didn’t have a chance to check out that previous speaker, I’ve had some pretty extensive time with the new SP-7260, using it alongside the Rokkit RP6 studio monitors which admittedly cost over 5 times as much – but their top tier audio reference monitors.
The Look and Feel
Right off the bat, the Rosewill SP-7260 catches your eye with its striking design. Behind the black mesh grille are the black and gold tweeter and woofer, capped off with the gold honeycomb at the bottom.
On the side of the right cabinet you’ll find the volume, treble, and bass knobs as well as the AUX and headphone jacks and the blue LED power indicator. I’m not a fan of the controls being on the side, but I can see why that decision may have been made – to keep the bold design of the speaker fronts.
On the back of the speakers, you’ll find the RCA and power inputs (no 1/4 or XLR). Rosewill includes a pack of RCA and AUX cables for connecting your speakers to a phone, tablet, pc, or game console.
The SP-7260’s are housed in all-wooden cabinet, anything less would certainly be frowned upon. These things are solid, and large.
The Sound
So let’s get down to brass tacks. Audio quality is tough to measure, and a bit subjective. I used the SP-7260 as my main speaker system over the span of two weeks, while editing videos, playing a few games, and listening to a ton of music (see my electric funk or my gaming & movie soundtracks playlists on Spotify).
Here’s what I observed:
The SP-7260 sounded great across the board, with one obvious caveat – the lack of booming bass, though that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Music and dialog came across crisp and smooth. Listening to the Dark Knight Rises soundtrack, I was able to hear the various tonal ranges from the thumping on the drums to the organs, violin & cello, and falsetto singing parts; in other words, most of the orchestra could be heard fairly distinctly. When playing Battlefield 4 or The Division, vocals were crystal clear as were a majority of the game sounds – with one exception, the thuds of melees, thwacks of gunfire, etc.
I expected the bass to be punchier, so maybe I should have curbed my enthusiasm, or redacted my earlier statement about the inconvenience of a subwoofer. Truth be told, subwoofers and apartments are very hard to co-exist, which would make these speakers the perfect fit for such a scenario.
There were two issues I experience with the speakers – hissing, and speakers would sometimes cut in and out. I should point out that both issues happened rather infrequently (over the span of two weeks, both issues surfaced 3-5 times for a few seconds each time) – it could be that I received a unit that was a bit out of whack.
Let’s Wrap It Up
I was impressed with Rosewill’s latest entry in the speaker market – with a standout design and good production quality, the SP-7260’s look to offer a solid option for those looking to step up to a higher quality speaker system. It certainly helps that the box comes with everything you need to connect the speakers to a console, pc, phone, or tablet right off the bat.
Overall, the sound quality you get with the SP-7260 is well worth the price tag of $119.99 MSRP.
At the time of publishing, the Rosewill SP-7260 speakers are on sale for $70 on Amazon!
