Developer: Cambridge | Product Type: Speakers | Price: £299.00 inc VAT

Creative’s Cambridge MegaWorks product range sets the tone over their Inspire range by introducing cinema equivalent-quality audio playback and extreme power for the fanatical entertainment consumer. The Cambridge SoundWorks range is an ideal option for the serious gamer and/or film buff. Although Creative’s Inspire range is still popular amongst many consumers the main selling point of the Inspire range would have to be the good value for money, with the MegaWorks range your going to be getting that little bit extra but of course for that little extra cost.

Visually the 550’s do not dither much from its predecessor - the 510’s. In fact one of the only major visual changes lies within the new logo, which now shows support for THX support in all its glory! Since the 510’s Cambridge have added some minor sound adjustments and tweaking to get the full backing from THX. With the addition of THX consumers will truly be able to enjoy the kind of audio playback that you would normally hear in today’s modern cinemas.

First Impressions

The general impression I got from when I first saw the MegaWorks 550’s was that they were a no frills kind of design with a very common look. Indeed there are much wackier and ultra futuristic designed speakers on the market but this is not to say the 550’s are ugly. For what they are they actually look pretty stylish and they have their fair share of curves. The materials on the 550’s are something which you would never get on Creative’s Inspire’s range or any other low value range for that matter. With the 550’s you are definitely paying for 100% quality. The satellite speakers are made of good quality solid plastic that are mountable on stands with shock absorbent rubber pads located at the base of each leg. The speakers can also be mounted to the wall or if you prefer you can purchase additional stands at roughly £39.99 a pair for the rear speakers. The subwoofer is made out of a good quality wooden structure which has four legs with rubber shock absorbent pads at the base. The material is coloured in a rather light black matted effect and has a nice smooth feel to the touch. The size of the satellite speakers are relatively small and are about D10½ cm/W10½ cm/H10½ cm in size. The subwoofer, however, is considerably larger and takes up quite a bit of floor space. The scale of the subwoofer comes in at about W28 cm/D28 cm/H31 cm in size.

The MegaWorks 550’s come with a rather nifty control interface which sits nicely on your desktop. Although the control is wired, which doesn’t really fit in with most competing products that contain more sophisticated interface features, the control still manages to provide all the necessary functions. Style wise the control is fairly sleek and comes complete with mute, power and volume buttons. The select button on the control enables you to set the volume of the master, centre, rear, sub and treble sound balance. LED’s on the control enable the user to see the current output settings of each of the channels. The control also includes a very useful headphones in jack that enables you to switch straight from live audio to private listening, without having to reach to the back of your PC!