Cheap Yamaha speakers don't get a lot of respect on audiophile web sites, though I seem to recall Consumer Reports liking some in the past. Frankly, they are not very pretty, so people are naturally going to be prejudiced against them. And, they are often more neutral sounding than some of the competitors, some of which make boomy bass or some other thing to draw attention to them right away to get them sold. I have also observed that there seems to be a lot of prejudice against speakers made by companies that make more than just speakers; people seem to believe that if a company makes other things, that somehow means that they are not experts on making speakers. I think, at their price point, Yamaha has made some pretty good sounding cheap speakers. But having gone to more expensive speakers, I still don't want them.