The competition
The
BIC America V1020 is a previous pick. It’s a nice, compact, very good-sounding subwoofer, and we still recommend it, but its price has gone up since we originally picked it.
The
BIC America V1220 has impressive power in the deepest notes but lacked mid-bass punch and didn’t blend as smoothly as the V1020 did with the speakers we used.
The
Dayton Audio SUB-1500 is a nice subwoofer that doesn’t really perform significantly better than the less-expensive SUB-1200.
The
Monoprice 14567 sounds pretty good, but the Dayton Audio SUB-1000L and the Monoprice SSW-10 deliver substantially greater output for roughly $40 more.
The
Monoprice 605999 is a pro-style subwoofer that can be used in the home, but our top picks and the BIC V1020 offer more kick for fewer bucks.
The
Monoprice 9723 is our previous top pick. It delivers surprisingly good sound quality and lots of deep bass output for the price, although we do have a slight overall preference for the Dayton Audio SUB-1200. However, the 9723 often goes out of stock, and while
we haven’t had any problems with the three samples we’ve tried, we’ve seen too many complaints about defective units to ignore.
The
Monoprice SSW-10 slim subwoofer is very similar in size and performance to the Dayton Audio SUB-1000L, but it’s a little pricier and its low bass performance isn’t as good. We felt that the SSW-10 sounded punchier in the mid bass, while the Dayton SUB-1000L delivered a more even, natural response.
The
OSD Audio PS10 is appealingly compact, but it doesn’t deliver as much performance for the price as the Dayton SUB-1200.
The
OSD SS8 is a low-profile subwoofer similar to, but smaller than, the Dayton Audio SUB-1000L. It’s very pricey for the performance it delivers.
The
Pioneer SW-8MK2 is our former pick for a compact model. It’s a great sub, but we like the Dayton Audio SUB-1000L better as a compact pick.
In our tests, the
Polk PSW110 didn’t have much punch or power for its size; the smaller, less-expensive
PSW111 is more impressive, but we think the Dayton Audio SUB-1000L is a more appealing and versatile compact pick.
The
PSB SubSeries 100 is nice if you really, really need a super-tiny subwoofer, but it can’t touch the price/performance ratios of our picks.
The
Yamaha YST-SW012 and
YST-SW215 both distorted on deep bass notes and couldn’t deliver much low-frequency rumble.