My granddaughter has a laptop that she brings with her each weekend when she visits, unfortunately the speakers on her laptop are not very good so she tends to wear earphones whilst listening to music or films. Now, I cannot abide being in the same room as someone wearing earphones as even if I can't hear 'their' music I dislike the feeling of being completely alienated from them - and more to the point hate having to shout to make myself heard in my own living room. I purchased these very sweet Hello Kitty speakers after discussing this with a friend, she had recently bought some for her own granddaughter and advised me that they were extremely good value.  When I found a set priced at just £12 I decided to treat her, knowing that as a Hello Kitty fan these would be well received. 

Up close I find the speakers to be rather plastic looking. They are, of course, made of plastic but the finish is slightly garish with shine in all the wrong places, this becomes less obvious when the speakers are stored on a shelf or computer desk but I must admit my initial impression was that they did not look as nice in the flesh as they had on photographs on the internet.

These speakers work via the USB slot in either a laptop or desktop computer; installing them is incredibly easy as there is no software to run, you simply plug in the speakers and give your computer a few moments to recognise them. This took literally seconds on my granddaughters laptop, although when I recently plugged them into mine it struggled somewhat to discover the speakers and it took a few attempts before I was able to connect them in order to listen to any music.  I would suggest these are designed for static computers rather than laptops as the size of them, and the fact they are connected via a fairly short wire, reduce the portability of the laptop somewhat.  My granddaughter is a rather restless child and moves from room to room a lot, watching her transfer herself from the kitchen to the bedroom looked to be a much more arduous process than when she is not using the speakers - although I suspect this would be the case with any wired speaker.

The Hello Kitty figure stands roughly six inches high, she has been designed to closely resemble the character we all know and love - I feel the body is slightly too rounded for it to be a completely true depiction but overall they are very attractive speakers. My granddaughter uses them each weekend and in between visits I store them next to my rarely used desktop PC, they do not look out of place despite the fact that my decor errs on the traditional side - its strange that such very pink objects should blend into the rest of the room so quickly!

The actual speaker is located on the back of Hello Kitty's head, sound is fairly clear if a little tinny at times. I have noticed the quality of sound vastly varies depending on what my granddaughter is listening to at the time, with the ghastly hip hop she listens to being the worst quality and so tinny that she can (thankfully) not bring herself to listen to it through these speakers. Other, less rushed and angry, songs have a far superior sound although it remains of poorer quality than more expensive computer speakers. Last week I listened to part of an audio book through these speakers, read by Sir Ian McKellen the pronunciation was pitch perfect and I found the speakers were far better suited to the spoken word than music - the occasional booming sound effect was more muffled than it should have been but overall I was happy with the quality for this purpose. 

In short I would certainly recommend these speakers for a child, or even an adult, for occasional use. The sound quality would not be good enough for me personally to use them as my permanent speakers, but my granddaughter is pleased with them and considering I bought these for her that's all that matters.