How to bring listening pleasure to your desktop

Our expert Chris Haslam gives advice on buying the latest hi-fi equipment

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The average UK employee will spend roughly 3,515 full days at work - that's 90,000 hours or one third of their time awake. What's more, around 63 per cent of us now work some of those long hours from home, which, by my loose calculations, means you owe it to yourself to upgrade the terrible speakers built into your laptop. In short, it's time to transform your home office listening with a pair of dedicated desktop speakers.

It's no surprise that ultra-thin laptops - just like the latest televisions - have poor audio. There's simply not enough space for proper speakers, and your enjoyment of audio, video, gaming and even Zoom calls suffers. A pair of stereo speakers, plugged into your laptop via USB, USB-C or 3.5mm headphone jack, or wirelessly using Bluetooth, will do wonderful things to the audio trapped in your computer. Even the cheapest design, such as the £30 Logitech Z150 and Creative Pebble V3, will be a serious improvement on the built-in speakers, but spend a little more and choose features that benefit how you work and listen to music, and you'll transform your home office into a personal listening room.