The USB convenience is one of the major reasons that I decided on this set. Saving an outlet is a nice feature for a laptop. As far as the sound quality goes, it's pretty good. The sound is much louder than laptop internal speakers. The highs are good, but I find them to be slightly static-y at times with some scratchy distortion (it's mild but noticeable). The mids and bass are average (but a drastic improvement over internal speakers). I find that if you put them on a surface with good resonance, the quality of the bass is improved. They definitely are a great improvement over built in laptop speakers. However, they don't sound as good as a nice 2.1 system of comparable price. This review is for refurbished speakers (but I don't imagine new ones would be any different).