Simple placement Pretty big sweet spot Clear mids/highs High WAF They look cool

Binding posts (easily replaced)

Heard these in the store, and they didn't sound bad, then saw them on ebay for half the price and picked them up. All and all good sound comes out of these things, but the best thing I found with them was placement. It was dead simple. Took all of about 5min to get great sound out of them. Later I played around with the placement, and found that most places, angles, and distances produced just about the same good sound. This was a bit of a surprise as other speakers varied wildly in different positions. Overall good clear mids and highs. Not the greatest in the lows (no big surprise). Needs a fast/tight sub. Other people have commented on the binding posts. I agree with most of them. The stock posts are pretty bad, but they are easy to replace. Just about any good standard spade post will do. Replaced mine with some Cardas copper, and life was much better.

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MMG Maggies B&W DM602 S3

Good divers and good crossover. Shape does reduce reflections

For the price, poor construction and poor value.

I love bookshelf speakers, I am always looking to upgrade one of the three pairs I have. So I figured with all the buzz I would try the blueroom speakers. I bought them, hooked them up and gave a quick listen...not bad. So I let them break in, 2 days at enough volume to keep the cones moving. Highs were good, mids were good and upper bass was good. I have to say I liked the way the shape reduced in-cabinet interference. I opened one up and noticed the nice crossover and good driver quality. BUT HERE ARE THE PROBLEMS I FOUND: 1. The construction is poor, very poor for almost $500 a pair. It feels like they took nice drivers and put them in a cheap plastic enclosure like those found at k-mart. 2. Price is almost Boseish. Seriously for this price you can buy B&W 601s, JM Lab 706, PSB 2B or even Triangle Titus. Any of those speakers will spank the blue room speakers. Don't get me wrong they sound good, are different and impressive for their size. But for less money you get equal or better sound: B&W dm303 Acoustic energy ages one Warfdale diamond 8.2 Heybrook hb2

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Still Own: B&W 601s2 $450 pair PSB 2B $250 pair BIC dv62 $120 pair Have tried: paradigm mini mon cambridge m50 warfdale diamond 8.2 acoustic energy aegis one

Value, articulate sound, enormous sweet spot, 90db sensitivity doesn't need a lot of power.

Thin bass, subwoofer is a necessity, extraordinarily long break-in period.

An absolutely fantastic value and among the most articulate speakers I have ever heard, the Blueroom Minipod is unbeatable at twice its MFRP of $480. The cabinet design, while controversial, provides for an enormous sweet spot and makes placement a breeze. I would recommend looking elsewhere for a pair of stand alone main speakers as the bass response, while fast, is very thin. However, when used with a subwoofer, the Minipods provide soaring highs that even the most astute listener will appreciate. I must agree with other reviewers: the break-in period is a long one. With a little patience, a quality subwoofer and not a whole lot of power, the Blueroom Minipod will outperform just about any bookshelf or satellite speaker in production.

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PSB Alpha, B&W DM303 and Magnepan MMG speakers.

Great out of the box but modding helps a lot too. Look great too.

4 ohm impedance a little hard for some amps to drive. Nothing else for the price

I've had these for a while now, but only recently got good equipment to go with them: Amp: Creek 4330R CDP's: Reviewing various: Marantz 67SE, Rotel 971, Arcam 7SE With a MSB Link DAC3 Anyhow I just modded them by adding a few layers of fiberglass internally (very messy and unpleasant job)... WOW what a difference in definition and clarity :) And now works equally well at lower volumes too. Treble is cleaner also.

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B&W P4 slim floor stander, get 'em if you find them available used.

they sound so good they will make you cry. they are small about 12 inches so you can place them anywhere.. i bought the wall mount.. which is way cool cuz you can position the speaker in almost any position. damn good conversation piece.. this is about the coolist thing ive come across. after the bose minicube (these are far superior) and the wharefdale loud panels..(good sound not great but a 9.5 on the coolness factor) the snowman is one of the best sets of speaker you can obtain for under $500

at first the snowman look was real cool.. but it got old fast.. about 10 mins after all my friends got around to seeing them and falling over.

These are the best speakers Ive ever heard for under $500. Slightly larger than a foot tall... but. thats the only thing little about them. BIG sound.. they match my AR-S50s for volume. these speakers are extremely accurate. I have nothing bad to say about them.. and for a 5.4 inch woofer.. youde sweare it was a 12"... no this will not replace your subwoofer...DUH..

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bose minicube (over 2x the price) and not as good)

Looks and Sound! Wife loves them, friends love them, I finally have speakers compatible for my music and her DVDs.

Requires a subwoofer. Rubber band trim piece comes loose easily (doesn't affect performance).

I bought these minipods with my new house and entertainment center in mind. The wife acceptance factors (WAF) were a big issue: they needed to wall mount, be kid proof, and not be ugly. For me, the speakers just needed to sound as good as possible and be affordable. Enter the minipod: wall mounted, kevlar driver, plastic shell, cool looking, paintable, not an ugly black box and less than $300 per pair. Add that they sound incredible and my decision was made for me. We bought 6, keeping one aside for a 5.1 setup. I've used them for strictly stereo listening and while they do require an active sub woofer for the lows; the minipods are capable of holding their own over the majority of the audible range. We considered the B&W leisure monitors as well, but the sound seemed tinny from the LM1 and our B&W dealer refused to hook up the VM1. We did end up with a pair of Jamo A510's in our bedroom. I'd consider these as well, especially if the minipod is a bit too "snowmanny" for your living room. The Jamos sound is nearly to the level of the minipod, but just doesn't seem equally distributed on the high and low ends.

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Jamo ART 510, B&W Leisure Monitors.

Humungous sweet spot. In a 5.1 setup, it makes finding that "zone" where you get perfect convergence with all your 5 primary channel speakers. Fantastic treble, and a respectable amount of bass for a bookshelf speaker. They will work well for casual listening, and even work well for parties. Flowing, organic design is also a plus. That makes it a great conversation starter, and the perfect functional decoration for a loft or apartment

You have to open them up to a mid-level volume before they really sing. Break in period is looooong. In that sense, these speakers age like fine wine. The more you use them, the better they will sound earlier. Go to work, class, or whatever, and put on a CD with lots of highs and lows. Think Vespertine by Bjork, or perhaps something classial or rock to give the minipod a workout. Come back in 8 hours and some of the edge to the harshness will have magically disappeared. Repeat daily for the next week or two and you will have beast of a little speaker.

Great speakers, plain and simple. As long as you don't put ludicrous amounts of power through them, they sound as sweet as honey without leaving a gaping hole in your wallet. For a small room, they are perfectly capable of pumping out a respectable amount of bass, but then again, you probably have an active sub for that, right?

Incredibly Large Sweet Spot.

lack of bass (bearing in mind I don't have the Bass Station). Muddy Mids (note: only 2 hours into playing)

Well, what can I say? They are cute. Their WAF factor is very, very, very high. In fact, the Significant Other (SO) wants more. How many times have you ever encountered such a phenomenon? [e.g. "Honey, I think we need another 2 pairs of 800 Nautilus so that we have a complete HT set-up." <= Yeah, in your dreams... (Now, if your living room is 40' x 30' maybe... heh)]. They are in the process of being broken-in right now. They do sound a trifle bright, probably due to their B&W Nautilus heritage. For the upper frequencies, they really strut their stuff--e.g. soaring vocals, piano, violins, horns, flutes. But if you are into low-frequency performance, look elsewhere. Without a Bass Station (which is expensive for a 75W RMS Vented Powered 10" Woofer IMHO), drums, organs, and cellos fall flat. I made the mistake of trying to audition them with "1812" and "Thus Sprach Zarathustra"... Don't make the same mistake *grimace* Weaknesses aside, their sonic sweet spot is very large relative to their diminutive physical size, which rather surprised me. A little cavert, the little black spherical "nubs" that slip over the end of the spikes are have a nasty habit of coming off and rolling into dark and inaccessible locations under furniture. Do yourself a favor, put a little flexible glue on the tip (hotglue (1 minute) or black silicone (24 hours)) on the spike tip, and then slip the "nubbins" over them. That way, they won't come off and remind you how old, blind and inflexible you have grown in the last few years doing nothing but sit down, sip scotch and grow corpulent listening to music instead of exercising ;-) Curiously, the SO (who is 26, female, and thus, supposedly at the peak of her sonic discernment, thinks the MiniPods are inferior to the $299 Cambridge SoundWorks Ensemble Set (I know, please don't cringe.)) A point worth reinstating however, is that the MiniPods were not auditioned with the Bass Station, plus the fact that they are not broken-in yet (1 hour of play so far). This might be contributing factors to the SO's negative review. thanks for reading.

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VideoLogic Sirocco Pro Cambridge SoundWorks MicroWorks (highly modified--replaced resistors with Vishay resistors, electrolytic capacitors with Elna Cerafine, by-passed powersupply capacitors with te

sound, design, impact on friends and the fakt that it is fairly unusual

bass

an enormously good speaker for this kind of money. the sound is wide and clear and the ipresion doesen''t weaken when you push it to the limit. a just love them!

Soundstage, size, unique design, nice highs

Plastic, lack of strong/full bass, speaker terminals

They are very interesting and not the usual rectangular box design. After reading the specs at minipod.com and the review at formen.ign.com/news/16945.html , I decided to drop the cash and buy some. I have to say, for this size speaker the sound quality is pretty good and above way average. I would say the high's are more rich and fuller then my Infinity Overture 2's. I compared them side by side, but obviously the Infinity's are a different class of speakers, but the Minipod's handled on it's own very well. In fact, I was suprised to find myself hearing the Infinity's highs as somewhat muddy compared to the Minipod speaker. But in the bass arena the Infinity's provided a fuller sound, due to the built in power subwoofer. If you listen to a lot of music with bass, I definitely would recommend a subwoofer with them. Jazz and pop music such as Nelly Furtado sounded great from just these two speakers. The sweet spot is huge and sound stage is bright and clear. If you want to own a unique speaker with impressive sound that will impress your friends, then I would definitely select this speaker. I will be testing these speakers head to head with the Energy Veritas V2.2 speakers this weekend. I don't think any bookshelf can beat the Energy's in sound but for the price of $350 for the Minipods compared to $1500 for the Energy's, you can probably get a whole 5.1 setup.

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Energy Veritas V2.2's