Usually, I tend to wear a headset when I play games. If I’m watching videos or listening to music, that’s where I use my speakers the most. So I was pretty excited to switch things up a bit and give my head a rest, especially since the hot weather is around the corner. That is where the Genesis Helium 610 BT comes in. I’ve had the same set of speakers for a while so these would have to be pretty decent to take their place, the short version of this review is well, yeah these are good and very versatile. Let’s delve into it.
As mentioned, the Genesis Helium 610 BT is a pretty versatile speaker set up, by that I mean you have multiple ways to use them. Regular aux, aux in via the desktop volume controller or Bluetooth. I do have a regular Bluetooth speaker but, the fact this does everything is super useful.
Anyway! In the box, you’ll get 2 tweeters, 1 subwoofer and what I like to refer to as a puck (the desktop volume controller/passthrough). Firstly, in my opinion, the design is pretty clean, the speakers aren’t unnecessarily bulky and as such don’t take up a lot of table space.
The sub is pretty big and fits nicely under my table if I had more space I’d probably put it off to the side slightly, but as somebody who usually sits on their chair cross-legged, I’ve not found it to be a problem. Then the puck sits nicely behind my keyboard, it’s no bigger than a pop can for surface area so it shouldn’t get in the way, but it’s a fantastic feature.
Before I start on the sound, I just want to say a quick word about the puck. This volume control and aux passthrough are actually great. It sits nicely on my desk, gives me an option to plug my headset in via aux without leaning down to my tower, or I can pump sound into it via the aux input, which I’ve found to be a VERY useful thing since the speakers built into my monitor aren’t very good so when it comes to using one of my consoles, not having to mess with wires too much is fantastic.
I now just leave an aux cable hanging out of the monitor to slot into the puck whenever I switch to PS4 or Switch, when not using a headset that is. If I was nitpicking it would be awesome to have a Bluetooth switch on here too, but I can definitely live without.
So, the Genesis Helium 610 BT look clean, they do it all, but how do they sound? They’re very solid. The bass is great with a dedicated knob on the sub so you can tune it to your liking, they get L O U D for sure and don’t sound super distorted at high volumes. I tested these speakers using a range of music/video and games and as mentioned in other audio product reviews, my music taste is as wide as can be, so as such these got the full shabang.
When listening to Russian Hardbass I got exactly the response I would like and when I tuned the bass in (after turning it all the way up for a laugh) I was really impressed, switching to some Rap music (J Cole in particular) the vocals were clear and again, great bass response. Moving along to something a little more mainstream, listening to some Disney tunes for the kiddies and they were definitely acceptable for a singalong, the kids would agree!
When playing games I mainly hit the Helium 610 BT with Rocket League & Apex Legends. Personally I really struggle to play FPS games without a headset these days, having used one since the early CoD days. When I’ve played Apex in the past using my speakers from the TV or my desktop speakers I’ve failed so hard, I guess I’m more of a soundw***** than I thought I was!
However, when using these I feel like the quality was definitely good enough that I didn’t feel alienated. Of course, it wasn’t comparable to my headset but as it isn’t a full surround array I wouldn’t expect it to compete on that level. When playing Rocket League the experience was great, the music was good and the game sounds (engines, goal explosions etc.) were all really solid. It was an all-round top experience.
So when we get to the meat and potatoes of it, what’re these like when you consider value for money? We’re in pretty tough times these days and you’ve gotta make sure you’re spending your money well, right? So, when I search the web for these guys so I can get a price to tell you how I feel they’re worth, I really struggle to find anything outside of mainland Europe. HOWEVER! Current currency conversion puts these speakers around £58 and honestly, I feel they perform above and beyond that. The only problem would be finding them in the UK. IF you can get your hands on some for around that price? Grab ‘em!
The Genesis Helium 610 BT TL;DR:
- The Genesis Helium 610BT is a 2.1 speaker array with Bluetooth capability;
- They sound very solid across a wide array of music, video content and games;
- For a rough price of £60, I would consider these to be a pretty solid use of your monies, depending on what you’re in the market for of course!
The review for the Genesis Helium 610 BT was written by Stuart “Stubat” Hannon, follow him on Twitter by clicking HERE. You can also find more information on the speakers themselves by clicking HERE to check out the official website. And lets not forget, you can find more of our hardware reviews, simply by clicking HERE.
