As always, it depends on what you need them for and what you're willing to spend.

The main differentiators are sound quality, how you want to power them but also how you want to connect, as the most popular consumer speakers these days are little Bluetooth jobs in which two familiar audiophile brands (Bose and JBL) have commanding presence.

Indeed, as Hugh said, trusting old familiar brands might not offer value since some of them have outsourced their names to be put on any old stuff. The cheapest stuff you can buy right now at $15 is from a known brand of legacy PC audio, Creative. What used to be brands well-known for expensive and high-end gear such as Klipsch and Acoustic Research are still around but far more at the low end than one might expect. A small few, such as Marantz and Denon, remain elite.

If all you need is to hear notification beeps and spoken word from podcasts, almost anything will do including the above Creatives. Aliexpress has a dizzying selection and Amazon Basics has a pair at $24. I have a pair of such nonames on my secondary PC. Your main choices are (a) whether you want it powered by the usual wall wart or a USB-C connection and (b) two discrete speakers or a single bar under the monitor.

Next level up ($40 to 200) are the aforementioned Bluetooth speakers which are designed to travel with laptops and phones. Many also have microphones and can double as a meeting room device. Logitech also plays in this space with workable midrange PC speakers, much as they always have.

Above that are the smart systems pioneered by Sonos and beyond that rigs like I have, where your PC sends its audio through a SPDIF optical cable to a conventional receiver which is then amplified and pumped through five or more speakers (Pioneer brand FWIW before they went exclusively into car audio). Way beyond what William was asking for but Hugh wanted to expand the conversation and I'm happy to go there. My first job was selling stereos at a long-defunct shop called TAT on Yonge Street, and I was DEEP into audiophile stuff in a previous life. Some but not all of that knowledge remains useful; very few people still agonize over the choice of turntable cartridge or tape deck.

And I will disagree with Hugh that audio sources are still just stereo. While old video and music-only releases are still stereo (with some notable exceptions), anything recently released attached to video, whether streaming or on disc, is usually 5.1 or better. (5.1 refers to a centre speaker, front and back left and right, and a subwoofer). And it's not just Dolby anymore, there is a mind-numbing array of Dolby (and competing) technologies, the latest of which is called Atmos, to enhance the listening experience. But methinks that too is well beyond what William needs 😉.

- Evan