Review on Pair of Carbon Black KEF LS50 Wireless II Speakers by Tommy Willis

Pros first: Sound: These powered speakers sound fantastic. Their picture and soundstage are so fantastic for the price that it's hard to see how they do it. I have speakers on steel stands on either side of a large sofa facing into a large room and I'm sitting on the sofa (between the speakers facing away from me!), do they still sound good? We weren't expecting acceptable stereo performance between and behind the speakers, but there it is. Of course, when placed correctly, they sound better than anything we've tested for less than $5,000, but their off-axis listening experience is amazing too. Anywhere in this 30 x 30 foot space sounds great! We connected the subwoofer to a good subwoofer at 85Hz, but that's personal preference; No bookshelf speaker in the world, except maybe an $8,000 Genelec, would have enough bass for us. Interface: The new app is decent, which is worth mentioning given the feedback on the Wireless 1. Claimed compatibility with Chromecast, Tidal Connect etc all worked. The app's built-in low-pass filter works great for subwoofers, and you also get instant sliders for gain settings, which is valuable. The I/O covers what I think most people need, and what it can't, can be handled with a simple Pi Roon box or USB to SPDIF converter for integration into existing systems (note that this is a whole system in the box). . actually, so the rest is just gravy). You can also connect to both devices. Fit and Finish: They're not made out of exotic woods and they don't look like $20,000 bookshelf speakers, and if that's your jam, that's the only issue I can think of. That being said, these things look and feel like the future is already here. To say they're made better than any other mid-fi or hi-fi I own or have reviewed for under $5,000 is an understatement. My exotic wood, engineered to look like a million dollars, Bowers and Wilkins seem to be of inferior quality compared to the wild ones. Customer Support: Everything you would expect from a company with such a reputation. just great. Although this is not necessarily a disadvantage. Let Tidal, Roon, Google and Apple spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on software development and system compatibility. Once you've set up your environmental controller of choice (Chromecast/Google Home, Roon, Apple, etc.), all you need is the KEF app for Settings. Your needs may vary and the app is good enough to use the product. We've been doing it this way for a few weeks. But it just can't compete with Silicon Valley's cutting-edge app suites. And now the most important thing. The wireless connection between the two devices didn't work on my first device. Tons of troubleshooting/testing later and I have a replacement set that has a stable connection between two devices at 2.4GHz, although this new set doesn't support a perfectly stable network connection. So far this is just a minor inconvenience (frequent rebooting of the box and adding it again via Google Home). This is not a violation of the terms of the first issue, just annoying. I suspect that either the wireless cards themselves or the internal antennas are just not up to the task or need some tweaking, which is frustrating considering how perfect the rest of this product is. Hopefully this is not a hardware issue and future firmware updates will fix this issue. If so, then there's no other product that does the job (fills a room with great sound from a single kit that you control wirelessly from your phone) that I can recommend. TL; DR: You are so close to perfection. If problems with wireless communication between devices or with different types of network environment can be solved, they get 5 stars and all my money.