Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by NCI XCOM great technology selection and service hello everybody I'm Aiden with Hardware Canucks and today we'll be taking a look at the yarrow tree system from Kanto this stereo system is priced at 449 for the set which includes the two passive speakers and the yarrow 2 amp the set is aimed desk use as well as TV and home theaters with Kantor marketing the arrow too as being a simple and easy to use system with a small footprint the system has a gloss black finish with a soft rubber finish on top and the design language is very reminiscent of the Apple TV and overall Ethel's of this look very well however both the glossy surface and the rubber finish so we're very quickly the gloss will show dust and is a fingerprint magnet and you'll notice any dust or wear on the rubber as well if you're keeping the speaker stationary without touching them like most people will be this probably won't be an issue but if you're moving them around frequently be ready to bust out that microfiber cloth something which would have been nice to include I can't really lay into them on not including a cloth however as they've done really well with accessories included batteries for the remote is a nice gesture and the inclusion of true optical cables at different lengths is awesome as most companies don't even include them and most people don't have them lying around also in the boxes the included remote AC adapter speaker wires USB cord for connection to your PC and a 3.5 millimeter cable and I guess on the note of cables we should take a look at the available ports since all the speakers are passive all the inputs and outputs are handled directly on the arrow to app on the back your left and right speaking connections as well as a port for an optional sub you also have your power port with the included power brick and your three outputs aux optical and USB these are probably the most versatile ports they could have included as it covers use with mobile devices PCs TVs and game consoles the one other connection that would have really made this amp would have been Bluetooth like on the wire three speakers as having an amplifier which you can pair with any speakers to make them bluetooth paddleball would have been awesome however Kanto decided not to include that on the arrow - you also have a headphone jack on the front and while Kanto didn't market this the arrow too has quite a powerful headphone amplifier built in as well to control all of these connections you have an infrared remote with source selection 12 stops of bass and treble adjustment balance control playback control for use with USB connection as well as volume adjustment the remote takes 2 included triple-a batteries and has a similar finish to the amp and speakers on the topic of the speakers they feature a one-inch silk dome tweeter and a 3.5 inch paper dome woofer houston an acoustic grade MDF cabinet the we ro true puts out a fair bit of power as well considering its size pushing 35 watts RMS per channel with all of these specifications and the physical overview done I'll start to talk about how I found the system in day-to-day use now I initially placed and test these speakers at my desk however the more I used them the more I realized that the feature set tends to lean itself towards sound system use as well so I also tested this in a TV room and home theater scenario so I'll start with usability at the desk I found myself using these like any other speakers I used the USB connection for my PC and while it's nice to have a large volume control in front of me I didn't end up using any other inputs and I didn't really use the remote it just feels clunky for desk use it stayed in my drawer most of the time besides occasional bass and treble adjustment the yaro 2 has a built-in standby mode so if you leave it on without any signal coming through it it will go into standby and then wake up when it detects a signal again this can be nice to save some power and if you're coming back to it later you can leave it on personally I fully power off everything when I'm not using my PC so this meant that when I came back I was powering it on from scratch this was frustrating as it wouldn't remember settings so I would have to change inputs volumes and adjust bass or treble again which was really frustrating on a good note however having the headphone jack on the front is nice as it allows for easy connection of your headphones to a high-quality source it has the benefit of going through the arrow throughs deck as well which means that you're getting cleaner audio and the - also has a very powerful headphone amp my PC needs about 70% volume to drive my k7 xx headphones at a comfortable volume whereas the yarrow too can pump these way further to the point where it would blow your ears out by the time the ro 2 is maxed out these cans distortion has hit them to the point where you can barely recognize the music I would feel comfortable with this driving headphones we are much much higher impedance and not feature set is one that's quite appealing having a powerful headphone amplifier makes the arrow to a much more two-in-one system and it's a great feature now in terms of sound these speakers sound pretty decent at my desk but I wasn't super impressed they are for a fairly flat response with pretty good soundstage however I found that they lacked in bass and especially fell short in very low register sounds the mid-range was fairly strong but the high range fell flat in certain genres and overall I found that speakers were lacking in clarity and punch I found the turning of the bass on the remote helps to fill this out a little more but even so it was still fairly underwhelming they also sound a bit thin by themselves and they lack warm with the high register being a little harsh at times on a volume perspective they can very very loud which is due to the powerful yaro 2 amplifier and a branch on that a little more later that's not to say they're bad but I don't think they're that competitive on a pure sound perspective when they're competing with speakers like the audio engine a 5 pluses they're not what I would call fun speakers and they're not flat enough with enough range to be studio monitors either so they're left in this weird middle ground if you're planning on having speakers live solely on the desk these might not be for you but part of this system is the expandability and features and if you're moving the speaker's around this feature set might appeal to you this brings us to the next area which is a TV room this is where I think the arrow 2 is excel the small footprint and design lends itself well to an upgrade to the inbuilt TV audio and the optical port on the RO 2 means that this can work with your TV or other devices like a console DVD player or something like the Apple TV for most TV programs the speakers perform really well they're clear and they sound great and for TV watching which is more reliant on the mid-range and is less critical in terms of sound they will provide a much better experience the remote also comes into play here as being able to switch inputs easily if you're changing devices and controlling volume is really handy and overall it works well now the last area I tested this in was a home theater / movie watching experience I was simultaneously impressed and disappointed in this area I was really impressed by how much power the ro 2 can push I could get these speakers to volumes which were way beyond comfortable listening levels even in this really large space which is really impressive even with larger speakers the ro 2 could push them to be much louder than I could ever want and it did really well for that speakers also sounded really good for movies with clear and detailed sound with very good soundstage and they performed really well except for one element which is bass as I said earlier adding more bass via the remote helps listening in almost all areas but you don't really get any Rumble which you especially need in movies the amplifier does have a sub port and once I added in a subwoofer the sound became fuller then I was extremely satisfied with the sound if you're going to be using this for a home theater movie watching experience subwoofer really helps in other scenarios the speakers most definitely benefit from offer but you can get away without them so my final thoughts are mixed for me the yarrow 2 amplifier is certainly the star of the show a range of features built-in high quality DAC powerful headphone and speaker amplifier and the small footprint makes it an awesome portable amplifier it seems versatile and high-quality and I can see the range of use cases being really appealing to many people however I can't help but feel a little underwhelmed by the accompanying speakers they're by no means bad but they seem a little lackluster compared to the arrow 2 amplifier the poor base and generally average overall range and clarity of the speakers doesn't really impress me which is a shame if you're not a supercritical listener and you just want to matching pair of speakers for the outer - that sound good enough these will certainly do but for anything more than that you might want to look elsewhere so that concludes this review thank you for watching everyone feel free to let us know what you think about this system and this review down below I'm Aiden with Hardware Canucks if you enjoyed the review hit that like button don't forget to subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in the next one