A feature-rich tower speaker with a lot of connectivity options
Speakers come in different shapes and sizes. Just recently we reviewed a Portronics sound bar. Time to change the form factor from horizontal to vertical and test this Energy Sistem Tower 3 G2 speaker. Let’s take a closer look at what the Spanish brand has to offer this time, and see if it has a towering presence in your home.
Energy Sistem Tower 3 G2: Design and specifications
As the name suggests, the Energy Sistem Tower 3 G2 is a tower speaker that stands a metre tall, 13cm broad, 17cm deep and weighs about 5kg. Our test unit had a white body with black drivers with a grey outline and a black top. You also get a full black variant of the same. The black and white combination does look elegant. Up front it has a 1.5-inch tweeter, a pair of 3-inch drivers and an air vent at the bottom. On the right side is a 4-inch subwoofer to handle the bass. All these are fitted in a wooden body. The total power output is 45 Watts RMS with 5W allocated for the tweeter, 10W each for the mid-range drivers and 20W for the subwoofer.
It has a twitter and a pair of 3-inch mid-range speakers up front
The tweeter and the subwoofer are covered with a grille and cloth respectively but the midrange drivers come with no protection. While they look good as is, their longevity can be in serious doubt if you have a curious kid in the house who likes to poke around. The power switch and knobs for Bass and Treble can be found at the rear bottom; not the best placement in my opinion. If you like fiddling with those controls every now and then, you will have to go crawling behind the tower to make the adjustments. The top panel has controls for adjusting the volume, input source and playback along with a small LED segment display that tells you the status.
The Bass and Treble controls can be found at the base of the speaker at the back
Energy Sistem Tower 3 G2: Connectivity options and features
At the back of the top panel are the connectivity ports. You will find a coaxial input, 3.5mm Aux input, a micro SD card slot and a couple of USB ports. While you can play music through one of the USB ports, the other is used for charging devices like a smartphone and provides 5V/2A output. There’s also a groove in the top panel to hold your phone in place. The USB port and card slot can read flash drives and micro SD cards with a capacity up to 64GB. This Energy Sistem tower speaker can also play music over Bluetooth. The Bluetooth version here is 4.1 with A2DP and AVRCP support. The wireless range is claimed to be 10 metres; I tried going as far as 5 to 6 metres and did not experience any connectivity issues.
There are a plenty on connectivity inputs at the back for different audio sources
The speakers come bundled with a wireless IR remote that lets you control pretty much everything the speaker can do. The speakers also have a built-in FM radio tuner and an attached antenna (wire). Unfortunately, the FM reception at my place is not too strong and the tuner couldn’t latch on to any FM channels. While I won’t hold it against this system, a point to note is that my phone did slightly better when it came to FM reception at that very spot and can tune in to at least a couple of channels, though not at their clearest best.
The bundled remote control lets you access most of the speaker features from anywhere in the room
Energy Sistem Tower 3 G2: Performance
I tested the tower using Aux, Bluetooth and USB inputs and the audio quality was pretty much similar for all three, with the physical inputs delivering slightly better clarity as compared to their wireless counterpart. The good part is that the speakers sound sweet when playing music up to 50% volume with a good mid-range response. The bad part is that the bass is quite weak and the weakness gets even more conspicuous as you take the volume beyond the half way mark. This, despite turning the Bass knob at the back to full.
The top panel has buttons to let you access volume control, music playback and change input source
This is my major gripe with this tower speaker system. I can understand a company opting for a 4-inch subwoofer in smaller speakers, but with so much real estate at their disposal, they could have easily fitted the Tower 3 G2 with a 5.25-inch sub, if not a 6.5-incher. The other frequencies are well-delivered but the lows let the overall experience down, and the sound feels like something coming out of a speaker a third its size. The other issue I have is not specifically with this Energy Sistem product but with single tower speakers in general. Given their form factor, it is generally not feasible to place such towers at the centre of the room, especially in a living room. And the sound coming from one side of the room doesn’t manage to provide the kind of stereo effect we are habituated to; even more so if you are further away from the speaker sideways. So I would say that this tower is better suited for a bedroom than a living room.
This tower is better suited for your bedroom than your living room
Energy Sistem Tower 3 G2: Price and verdict
The Energy Sistem Tower 3 G2 is priced in India at Rs 9,999 but can be purchased on Amazon India for Rs 7,999. At that price point, it offers an elegant design and a plethora of connectivity options, but the sound output leaves a lot to be desired, especially the bass. If you aren’t into bass-heavy music and can place this tower in the centre of the room, you may consider buying it, but ideally for a couple of thousand rupees lower. A price tag of around Rs 5000 to Rs 6000 would have been more apt for this package.