Mirage Nanosat review

This is an affordable speaker system but it's also one of the most unusual, utilising Mirage's proprietary Omnipolar drive technology. The diddy speakers fire upwards into cute reflectors, which disperses the sound in a 360° pattern.

There's a slight forward bias built into the spread of sound, which aims to replicate the way sound reaches your ear in a live music environment. But how good are they for home cinema?

They certainly look the part: small enough to blend into the modern living room, but solid enough to convince you that you're getting some serious tech for your outlay. The good news with these is that, by their very nature, Omnisat speakers are extremely room friendly.

This is great news for those who can't have their home cinema set up in the traditional way, as they sound entertaining wherever you put them - you obviously need some approximation of the standard layout, but there's a truck-load of flexibility built into these boxes - a major plus point.

A minimum amount of tweaking results in an enjoyable surround setup, with a convincing feeling of being in the middle of the action. But strive for more and you are rewarded... at least at first. Tweaking the levels results in the satellites starting to swing into action, with the diffuse nature of the sound filling your listening room as though far larger speakers were involved.

The only downside is that the subwoofer has to do a lot of work in the mid-range, and it's not entirely comfortable with this role. This results in a lack of body, although the subwoofer again picks up and makes its presence felt with the occasional deep thump for sonic effects such as explosions.

This is a fun value-for-money system, which will offer a surround performance where space or room limitations might normally preclude such an indulgence. The set doesn't break any performance barriers but is unique enough to warrant serious investigation.