Price: $3,299 At A Glance: Unique audio design • Inaccurate color tracking • Blacks measure better than they look
LCD Picture, Widescreen Sound
Many of today’s flat-panel HDTVs can look amazingly good. But when sets frequently offer similar features that differ mainly in name, it’s hard for any particular model to break loose from the yada, yada, yada sameness of the pack. That is, unless the manufacturer can convince the consumer that its Super Dynamic Image Enhancer is something he’s just gotta have.
QuickMotion. SmartShutter. Dark Detailer. Plush Imaging. Plush720p. Plush1080p. DeepField Imager. SharpEdge. Buzzwords were flying faster than you could swat them at Mitsubishi's April 2005 line show in Orlando, Florida. Journalists were flown in from all over the US to view the latest Mitsubishi televisions, loaded with these exciting—or at least exciting <I>sounding</I>—features.
How things have changed. Just a couple of years ago, bringing a 57-inch TV into my studio meant wrestling with a 300-pound gorilla of metal, glass, plastic, and particle board. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my 51-inch Hitachi CRT out of its room so new flooring can be installed. But when Mitsubishi delivered their new WD-57731 for review, I could almost have moved its 88 lbs. by myself had it been in a more compact package. As it was, two delivery persons hauled it into my house without breaking a sweat.
Price: $2,999 Highlights: Accurate color • A high contrast ratio with convincingly deep blacks • Bright, punchy, dimensional image
Features
With its 65-inch (diagonal) screen, the Mitsubishi WD-65835 is the second from the largest set in Mitsubishi’s full-featured Diamond line. But it’s a lot lighter and more maneuverable than you might expect.
The set offers a full array of the usual video and audio connections. Plus, it includes the increasingly common USB port for viewing your JPEG photos. There is no RGB computer input. You can only connect a computer via a digital link to one of the HDMI jacks.
Will there be laser light in your home theater some day? Mitsubishi hopes so. To the best of our knowledge, it is the only company about to use lasers as the light source for some of its DLP-based, rear projection televisions.
Subwoofer Performance Features Build Quality Value
PRICE (as tested): $4,010
AT A GLANCE Plus
Affordable price
Detailed overall sound
Good envelopment with Atmos soundtracks
Minus
Towers have limited deep bass
Ordinary cosmetics
THE VERDICT
Monitor Audio's Bronze 6G system is a remarkable testament to how much speaker you can get today for a reasonable price.
Britain-based Monitor Audio offers a wide range of loudspeakers at prices spanning from the bargain basement up to the penthouse that are cleverly named for a variety of metals: Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze. The company must have run out of suitable metallic names when its Monitor series was introduced a few years ago— Steel or Aluminum (or Aluminium!) clearly wouldn't do. But while that budget-priced series represents the entry point to the Monitor Audio's offerings, our saga here covers the next step up: Bronze 6G, the sixth generation of the Bronze line.
Price: $26,000 (excluding stands, updated 3/11/15) At A Glance: Pristine highs, uncolored mids, tight bass • Great dynamic range • Subwoofer lacks wallop in the deepest, loudest bass
Better Than Golden
Founded in 1972, U.K.-based Monitor Audio has long produced speakers that offer good value. Until recently, it topped out at $4,500 per pair for the Gold Signature model. So when I heard about the new Platinum range, priced at $10,000 per pair for just the front left and right flagship PL300, it came as a surprise.
Founded in 1972, UK-based Monitor Audio has long produced speakers that offered good value, from its low-end Bronze line, starting at around $325 for a pair of two-way bookshelf models and extending up to $4500/pair for the company's priciest Gold Signature model. Even that is not an outrageous price for an upscale design in today's speaker market. The number of current speaker lines topping out at over $20k/pair, however, would be alarming if it weren't counterbalanced by excellent speakers selling for a fraction of that price.
Monitor Audio Silver 10 Speaker System Performance Build Quality Value
Monitor Audio W-12 Subwoofer Performance Build Quality Value
PRICE $5,925 ($6,600 as shown in gloss black)
AT A GLANCE Plus
Crisp, open sound
Superb imaging
First-rate fit and finish
Minus
Two-way center channel
Limited subwoofer output
THE VERDICT
The center speaker suffers the usual off-axis quirks of a two-way design, and the small sub came up short for the deepest movie bass, but Monitor’s Silver series is a triumph, a treat to hear, and well worth seeking out for a serious audition.
Monitor Audio offers an exceptionally wide range of speakers, from the decidedly expensive (but not nosebleed high-end) to the modestly priced. In 2010, I reviewed the company’s relatively affordable Silver RX system. That line has now been completely redesigned, losing its RX moniker and morphing into the Silver series. Like the RXs before them, the Silvers were designed at Monitor’s U.K. headquarters and are built in a company-owned plant in China. For this review, we’ve selected the largest of the floorstanders, the Silver 10, along with the Silver Centre, the Silver W-12 subwoofer, and, instead of the Silver FX dedicated surround speakers, a pair of Silver 2s to serve the surround channels.