Bookshelf Speaker Reviews

A little Danish for your sonic sweet tooth.

Flat-panel TVs—and the speakers that love to be with them—receive such obsessive attention from the press that you'd think all other forms of video display—and the speakers that love to be with them—had disappeared. Jamo has fed the trend with their remarkable 2F speaker system, which teams perfectly with a plasma display. But rear-projection sets are still around. In fact, with DLP-, LCD-, and CRT-based models to choose from, they're taking on slimmer shapes, waxing in both cool factor and diversity.

The inverted bottle meets the custom virtuoso.

At some point in the evolution of home theater, someone noticed that the phrase includes the word home. At that point, weird and wonderful things began to happen. Speakers morphed into smaller, more rounded, and occasionally more imaginative shapes. The surround receivers that fed them maintained their black-box identities but moved discreetly into closets. Back panels began to sprout extra jacks, the better to interact with touchscreen interfaces, second zones, and other niceties that have become staples of the connected home.

Price: $2,144 At A Glance: Doughnut-shaped speakers fit just about anywhere • Withstands tough environments • Wireless sub makes your life one cable less complicated

Cornered and Wireless

Fade up on an open box of doughnuts. Are they Krispy Kremes or Dunkin? Leave that to the product-placement department.

PRICE $4800/pair

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Powerful yet refined sound
Classic design
Adjustable midrange and treble

Minus
Need stands
Take up more floor space than tower speakers

THE VERDICT
The JBL L100 Classic MkII delivers a seamless blend of vintage aesthetics and modern acoustic performance, offering punchy, refined sound whether in stereo or home theater setups.

It’s hard to dispute the legendary status of the original JBL L100 when it comes to iconic speaker designs. Those retro Quadrex foam grilles have become as much a calling card for JBL as the crisp, punchy sound signature itself. After all, they are the descendants of the L100 Century speakers featured in the famous "Blown Away Guy" Maxell cassette tape ad.

With the L100 Classic MkII, JBL has updated the beloved 12-inch three-way design with modern acoustic engineering, resulting in a speaker that seamlessly blends vintage aesthetics with contemporary fidelity. I recently paired a set of L100 Classic MkIIs with a Denon AVR-A1H receiver in both 2.0 (stereo) and 4.1 configurations to see if the new L100s lived up to their near-mythical predecessors. Spoiler alert: They do—spectacularly.

Swing low, sweet subwoofer.

Curse you, JBL, for giving me yet another reason to want to move out of my apartment. As if paper-thin walls, the inability to own a dog, and the desire to dine more than 20 feet away from the toilet weren't enough, I must now contend with colder stares than usual from my neighbors—stares that coincide with the arrival of the SCS300.7 7.1-channel sub/sat system.

PRICE: $599

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Excellent clarity and detail
Three-dimensional soundstage
Supports HDMI ARC and CEC control
Full-featured remote
Attractive and compact
Minus
Modest maximum volume when used without a sub
No phono input

The Verdict
If you’ve ever been burned by a soundbar that looked sleek but sounded like a tin can, the REN might just restore your faith in compact all-in-one systems.

I’ve spent a little over a month with a pair of Kanto REN active speakers in my living room setup, and I’ve enjoyed every single minute of it.

PRICE $480

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Phono, line, optical, Bluetooth inputs
Subwoofer output
Wide choice of colors
Minus
USB not PC-friendly

THE VERDICT
If you’re looking to plug your turntable directly into a good-looking and functional pair of speakers, the Kanto YU6 will make it work—and sound great.

Why shouldn’t life be simpler? If there’s one thing your studio apartment, dorm room, bedroom, or guest bedroom doesn’t need, it’s an audio rack with a tangle of cables. But going without music would be barbaric. So how simple do you need to get? If a bare-bones Bluetooth speaker isn’t enough, a pair of powered speakers might make more sense. You’d have a stereo soundstage without the fuss of an outboard amp and rack.