When your working life or even your social life revolves around sitting in front of a screen for hours, you deserve to have some decent speakers. The 104 speakers from JBL One series are compact powered desktop monitors. Created with the mission to give content creators the ability to hear all the details in their audio for better control while mixing and editing, they have drawn on seven decades of JBL professional engineering experience to achieve this.

Designed for recording musicians, podcasters, and music and video producers as well as anyone seeking a decent listening experience. Starting with an overall visual design they look reasonably smart, nothing too striking and bordering on a little dated with the oval shape. The speakers have a fixed stand design, which means you can angle the direction of the sound and would need to purchase additional stands to achieve this. They are compact enough to tuck in on even the messiest of work spaces, on the front there is a volume control for easy level adjustments and the headphone jack automatically mutes the speakers when in use.

There are dual 1/4-inch balanced and single 1/8-inch unbalanced TRS inputs to accommodate a wide range of connections and the new coaxial driver design features a high-frequency driver aligned with a precisely contoured woofer cone to deliver an accurate response. The cabinet’s contoured low-frequency port works with the driver to provide the bass and has a low frequency extension down to 60 Hz, the integrated 60-watt Class D amplification distributes 30 watts per speaker, and it can provide up to 104db SPL. The sound that the 104 speakers produces is truly enjoyable, the bass coming out of these is impressive for their compact size and the higher frequencies are rich and clearly defined, for the price range these are very impressive speakers so if your budget is limited you won’t be disappointed with these. RRP £129

Current Cheapest Price

4 out of 5

Pros

Excellent value for money

Good, detailed sound with powerful bass

Master and extension speaker sold as one set

Contoured low-frequency port

Integrated 60-watt Class D power amplifier

Three sets of inputs

Master monitor includes electronics for the extension monitor

Front panel volume control and headphone jack with speaker mute feature

Integrated power supply

Cons

Can’t control the vertical direction of the sound