Loudspeakers - reviews and price comparison

This guide is primarily for Home cinema speaker packages, but also contains useful information if you are looking for other speakers.

What to buy, package or separate components?

There are many advantages with buying all the components to your home cinema system separately instead of buying a whole set. This way you can buy the best brand and model for each component and adapt it according to your needs. A manufacturer who makes great speakers might not make the best receivers, and the other way around. It is however an advantage to buy all the speakers from the same manufacturer since they are combined to work well together. It is also better aesthetically if all speakers have the same design. This type of sets is listed under our category of Home cinema speakers.

Number of speakers

To get a good surround sound the set needs to consist of at least five speakers. That covers the most common sound systems on DVDs. If you have a receiver with more channels than five you can have a look at the sets with 6 or 7 speakers to get an extra dimension in your home cinema system.

Typical speaker configurations:

Subwoofer

Many sets with smaller surround speakers are delivered with a separate subwoofer. This component represents the ".1" in the "5.1-" and "6.1"-systems.
To render the deepest tones it takes big speaker elements and high power. Some subwoofers have a built-in amplifier suited for speaker elements (active subwoofer), these are of course to be preferred. If the subwoofer lacks a built-in amplifier (passive subwoofer) you have to make sure that your receiver has a power output for this type of speakers or buy a separate bass-amplifier.

Power

The indicated power on a speaker set is the maximal power output that the speakers can handle from the receiver without overheating the speaker element and break the speakers. Therefore you should not choose a speaker set with a lower maximal power output than the output on your receiver.

Impedance

The impedance indicates how much resistance the speakers imply on the receiver. This number has to be matched with the impedance stated on the receiver’s specifications. If the speakers have lower impedance the receiver risks getting damaged.

Sensitivity

A speaker's sensitivity is a measure of the sound power you can get at a certain distance when providing a certain input power to the speaker.
The higher this number is the less power you need on the receiver to get the desired sound volume. Depending of the power of your amplifier you need more or less sensitive speakers.

If you have a normally big living room (~25 m²) and normally sensitive speakers (87 dB) a receiver with 80 W per channel is enough, based on Home THX Program’s recommendation. In other cases, see list below:

Rating/awards

On testwinner.co.uk all the different ratings given by expert testers have been translated into a percentage from 0 to 100 with 100 being the maximum rating.
The average rating for a product can indicate different things. A low average rating is a warning that the product maybe won't live up the expectations created by the ads for the product. A high rating often means that the product has great features and works well. The more tests of the product the better accuracy in the average rating.

The amount of test wins/awards shows how many times the product has been named winner or been selected "Editor's Choice", "Best Buy" or received similar positive awards in tests. An award means that the product stands out from the competition in one way or another. It can be by giving value for money or by being innovative, or simply by just filling its purpose in a really good way.