Ultimate Dorm Room Gear Guide

6. Accessorizing

Altec Lansing Expressionist Ultra 2.1 Speakers - $157.99

If it isn’t broken, then don’t fix it. It seems like mama and Altec Lansing both love that old adage, since the latter has kept the Expressionist Ultra 2.1 speaker system in its lineup for almost a year now. That’s fine with us, since we loved these speakers back in our 2009 Tech Expert Holiday Gift Guide. If anything, it’s better because they’ve gone down in price by about $42 since our initial review.

You really can’t go wrong with the Expressionist Ultra setup, especially for a dorm room or small (no surround sound) home theater setup. The 200 watts of sound (68 of which come from the 6.5-inch subwoofer) are more than enough for any PC/console game, and will do titles like Avatar and Iron Man 2 as much justice as any 2.1 system can muster. The power/volume control unit has integrated audio out for headphones as well as an input for adding your roommates MP3 player to the party playlist, and the included RCA adapter makes the Expressionist Ultra home theater-ready out of the box. We’re still fans of the system’s black, monolithic style, too. It’s hard to match the power of the Expressionist Ultra at its new lower price, and the styling really puts it over the top for us.

Read Reviews of the Altec Lansing Expressionist Ultra at Newegg.com

Razer Carcharias Gaming Headset - $79.99

Picking the right headset for an “average” student is no small challenge. We had to make several assumptions about a typical college student’s priorities within a dorm room. First off, what’s the application? Will the headset be used primarily for VoIP, gaming, music enjoyment, movies? The answer is likely “all of the above.” In a perfect world where you need the best of everything in a PC headset, you’d buy something like the psyko PC51V1 ($300). But we’re guessing that in a world of $100 textbooks and student loans, something in the sub-$100 range is more feasible.

We also had to ponder whether to go wired or wireless. If the latter, then we’d probably recommend options either from Turtle Beach or Creative, as both brands have delivered some surprisingly good models recently. However, dorm rooms are small and a headset would mostly be used while sitting in front of the PC, so staying wired will likely yield better sound quality and lower cost.

Gamers care about “presence” in games, and so-called surround sound headphones are supposed to give you an edge in being able to better sense where things are in relation to you while in-game. However, we have yet to find a pseudo-surround approach that actually delivered satisfying results in a headphone, and true 5.1 headphones, while much better at spatial separation, have the downside of being bulkier.

This leads to our last main concern: comfort. In general, higher quality headphones weigh more and thus cause soreness and fatigue sooner than lighter sets, especially in the sub-$150 range. If you’ve tried enough headsets, you know that it’s rare to find a product that can be worn for several hours straight without excessive discomfort or at least sweaty ears. (Strange but true.) Bear in mind that because people’s heads are shaped differently, one person’s comfortable fit can be another person’s torture device.

This all takes us to Razer’s Carcharias analog headset. Now, this isn’t the highest fidelity headset around. It’s good. For $80, it’s very good. But it’s no set of Bose or Sony studio headphones. Set your expectations accordingly. Similarly, the microphone mounted on its swivel boasts being noise canceling, as most in this field do. While we don’t have the inside scoop from Razer engineering, our guess is that this mic “cancels” noise because it’s unidirectional, not because it uses active noise cancellation, a mic array, or anything similar. The mic is sensitive and will reduce some background noise, but a fair bit gets through. Again, this is normal in this price band, and Razer fares better than many we’ve tried. We wish the mic boom were more flexible, but we really didn’t have any problem with it.

The Carcharias sets itself apart from the crowd with its superior comfort. Soft ear pads, an adjustable headband, lack of much band tension on the head (a must if you wear glasses), and light weight for the overall sound quality make this a great pick for long wear under the broad application range typical of today’s tech-savvy students.

Read Reviews of the Razer Carcharias Headset at Newegg.com

Epson Stylus NX420 - $69.99

Sure, you might find yourself doing the bulk of your term paper printing at the expense of the campus libraries and computer labs, but – better safe than sorry – it’s always a good idea to keep an all in one (AIO) printer at home for photos and printing directions. The Stylus NX420 from Epson is an inexpensive solution that will prove to be clutch when you don’t have time to print at the library, or if you want to scan that report card so you can Photoshop that D+ in Italian 101 into a B+. The NX420 can print over 6ppm in black, and 3ppm in color for those fancy macroeconomics presentations. The 1200x2400 dpi scanner can easily handle all your photos and documents, and the built-in 802.11n WiFi means everyone in the suite can share the printer, as well as paper and ink costs. Of course, with replacement ink going for around $16, you won’t need money from mom and dad to replace those depleted cartridges. The NX420 comes with all the other features you come to expect in an AIO, like one-touch copying and printing, a small LCD display, and Mac compatibility.

Read Reviews of the Epson Stylus NX420 Printer at Newegg.com