The 5.1 layout is all but common these days, but it's nice to see that you can get discrete surround sound to go with your DVD player or games console under 10k. As far as looks go, it's twin-tone silver and black finish and the floor standing satellites will go well with almost any existing A/V equipment that you have. The COMET-A1 supports onboard Dolby/THX hardware decoding which can generate multi-channel sound from stereo sources like an MP3 player, CD player or computer. As far as connectivity goes, you won't be disappointed. It has all the inputs you need, including optical and coaxial. There's also an infrared remote control to select an audio source, control volume, FM or tweak the sound.

Some assembly is required for the satellites; the speaker, vertical stand and base all come separately. But this, including speaker setup, only takes a few minutes. We tested it out with regular stereo sound, with a DVD player using 5.1 channel audio and with our Xbox 360. At low to mid volumes, the speaker set will amaze you with clear and crisp sound. Even the virtual surround feature works well by creating surround sound from games, VCDs, DivX files and MP3 audio. The only slight issue at high volumes is that the poweful subwoofer starts to overpower the satellites, and starts soundling a little muddy too.

Overall, the Esys Divoom COMET-A1 is stylish and good value if you're looking for an easy way to enhance the sound from an existing TV-DVD combo.