Do $120 speakers have better sound quality than $16 speakers?

[ProtoflareX]

I know this sounds like an idiotic question, but surely you can agree that it makes sense to assume that a $120 set of speakers have a higher sound quality than $16 speakers. However, after doing some reserach, it seems as though the wattage of a set of speakers has nothing to do with sound quality. If that is indeed true, then how do you determine the sound quality of a pair of speakers? Specifically, I would like to know if the $120 speakers linked below, have a higher sound quality than the $16 speakers also linked below.

$16 speakers: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/speakers-z130?crid=47

$120 speakers: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/speaker-system-z623?crid=47

 

[ssddx]

in most cases more expensive speakers do have better quality although this is not always true. in this case you are comparing budget level pc speakers with some of the nicer sets of pc speakers so there would of course be a noticeable difference.

wattage or has nothing to do with sound quality and more to do with output volume and strength. how do you measure sound quality? user reviews and hearing them yourself. even hz to hz frequency response doesnt tell you how good they sound only the specs of what they are capable of.

for $120 instead of going with pc speakers you have the option of going with a nice pair of bookshelf speakers. either a an unpowered set like the micca mb42, pioneer bs22 or similar with an amp like the lepai 2020 (the dta-120 dayton would be better if you had budget) or a powered set like the mackie cr3, maudio av40 or av30 or even the powered version of the miccas the pb42x. powered speakers (active) do not need a separate amplifier while unpowered (passive) do.

while bookshelf speakers without a subwoofer will lack a bit on the very low end, you will get much better audio quality out of them then pc speakers. you can always add a subwoofer later such as one from polk or dayton.

if you absolutely want pc speakers and are set on such kits, i can tell you that all logitech sets will be average on sound quality. not the best, not terrible and tend to have very bloated bass instead of being tight. basically they are boomy not punchy. edifier or creative speakers might sound a bit better if you prefer less boomy. the klipsch set is not terrible but the subwoofer is much too large for the satellites. none of the pc speakers will be as good as hifi equipment but there are certainly some choices out there which sound pretty darn good - all of them better than the z130.