Back in 2019 I needed a pair of desk speakers for office purposes and listening to music at lower volumes. There were the Eris 3.5 and the Mackie CR3(?) at that time (and not much time to look around). No MR4's not MR3's and in all honesty, the 100USD Eris 3.5 seemed to be better than most typical PC speakers at that price point.
It took not long and I did not like them...
Then the day came where the Eris Sub8 was on sale for ~170 USD. And there were measurements that made fair EQ'ing possible. With a sub, no more below 80 Hz to the Eris 3.5, stuffed port and some EQ'ing they lasted until this summer and I never had a thought about replacing them. That make them "not terrible" in my opinion.
Finally, this summer, the amp or power supply began to act weird (crackling and volume changes on left channel) and I replaced them with a pair of MR3's. With the Sub8 still working there was no need to go with the better bass response of the MR4, so the better overall clarity of the MR3 won. The set now sounds better, the MR3's are also much quieter (which does not matter in an office).
Would I buy the Eris 3.5 again? No.
Would I replace them if they were still working? No.
It's about for what you use them, what is their purpose? Can you EQ them? In my case at simple 16 band graphic EQ was good enough to fix most frequencies and resonances. The directivity of them is actually not too bad.
Final thoughts...
It's a below 300USD setup in an office, so what do you expect? It's already completely over the top in terms of bass. Or volume levels. There is no fancy stuff allowed here, like external DAC's etc. It mainly plays ZOOM/TEAMS calls, MP3s, FLACs and Internet Radio from a corporate laptop. All of it at levels so others can work uninterrupted. If you have them, if you get them for free (or dirt cheap) don't "nah' them only because there is better stuff around, which there is. But they are probably still better than 98% of the speakers on other other office desks in your neigbourhood. Just don't use them as your mains to listen to music at home. That's not their purpose.
. The bottom end is really nice on those, way above what I expected from so small speakers.
