Guillemot Corporation is a world designer and manufacturer of interactive entertainment hardware and accessories for PC and game consoles, offering a wide range of diversified products under the brand name Hercules for video, audio and WiFi products. While originally known for their computer graphics cards, Hercules has within the last few years expanded into other growing market segments such as personal multimedia systems. The product we have for review today is the Hercules XPS 40 2.0 Slim speaker system.


If you are not familiar with the various types of speaker systems, 2.0 indicates that this is a very basic system comprised of only two speakers, a left and a right. Moving up to a 2.1 system adds a third channel speaker, a subwoofer for producing low frequency bass notes, while the other two satellite speakers produce the majority of the other sounds. There are many larger sets of speaker systems when you get into surround sound, such as 4.1, 5.1 and even 7.1, which add rear, center and extra front channels into the mix. But to keep things simple, it's important to know that a 2.0 system is typically the most basic speaker set available, the only exception being a single, mono speaker.

Let's take a closer look at the Hercules XPS 40 2.0 speaker system.