Here's the thing about speakers - there are no strict, measureable industry standards. In other words, there is no clear "right" or "wrong".
In general, prefessional mixers and sound engineers agree upon the idea that speakers ought to be "transparent" and simply reproduce the signal they are fed with as little distortion and alteration as possible. But they also generally agree that the recordings they release ought to "translate" to speakers other than the ones on which they made the recordings. They are well aware that people will be listening to their recordings on a hugely diverse selection of speakers and earphones. So most larger studios keep a fairly wide variety of speakers on hand so that they can test the final recordings to make sure that the most important elements of the recordings can be heard and appreciated on speakers of varying levels of quality.
There are two parts of your audio system that make the greatest difference in the sound that you hear: your speakers and your room. Amplification and pre-processing (ie. decoding and digital to analogue conversion) can make some audible difference as well, but typically not nearly as much difference as changing your speakers or changing your room.
What happens with most audio enthusiasts is that we seek change. We might say that we want an "upgrade", but more often than not, what we're really after is the experience of listening to a familiar recording and being able to pick out something that we've never noticed before! In many cases, that revelation happens when we get speakers that have measureably lower distortion and/or more uniform (ie. "flat") frequency response at the listening position. But it can also be the case that the new speakers simply emphasize a certain frequency range, which highlights a previously unnoticed sound. Such speakers might not be "better" overall - they are simply different.
So, as I said, there is no clear cut "right" or "wrong". Oftentimes, people will attempt to buy speakers with the idea that they will "last a lifetime" or be of "reference quality". In my opinion, this sort of thinking usually eventually gives way to simply wanting a change and to hear "something new" in familiar recordings.
If you open those B&W speakers and keep them, you will likely enjoy them. B&W is very well-respected and well-renowned for their "British sound". You will find B&W speakers in many, many recording studios and they will play back your recordings in a way that will very likely reveal new details that you had previously never noticed before.
Whether or not the Energy Take Classic package will be enjoyable to you is going to depend heavily on your room. The Take speakers are very small and they should be used in an appropriately sized and shaped room. Most people are quite pleasantly surprised by the quality of sound that such small and inexpensive speakers can produce, but they are still very much limited by their size and price and most audio enthusiasts will come to think of them as a nice "stepping stone" on their way to more expensive and more capable speakers in the future. That said, speakers like the Energy Take Classics can almost always find a purpose and a home in a secondary room like a bedroom or a den. Their small size makes them easy to incorporate into almost any small room and they provide nice, pleasing sound - a huge upgrade over built-in TV speakers or a clock radio!
You'll have to decide for yourself what it is you are hoping to achieve with your speaker purchase. But regardless of what you decide to keep, if you are a budding audio enthusiast, the time will come with either set of speakers when you long for something new and interesting. The fun comes in the comparisons and in discovering previously unnoticed details and sounds in your familiar recordings. Neither the B&Ws nor the Energys are going to be the "be all, end all". But I will say this: if all you want to do is have surround sound for TV and movies and you don't really care about picking out nuances in your music or intently listening to your recordings for tiny details and new revelations, then the Energy Take Classics make more sense. On the other hand, if you are a budding audio enthusiast and you want to listen closely to your recordings and search for "hidden" details in your music, then the B&W pair makes more sense. But just keep in mind that you're going to end up wanting to "upgrade" in either case at some point. It seems as though you readily accept the idea that you'll want to eventually replace the Energy Take Classics - calling them the "value" purchase. But it seems as though you are thinking you'd end up keeping the B&Ws for a longer time - calling them an "investment". Personally, I wouldn't look at either of them that way. Both are merely "stepping stones" in your audio journey. So it's really a matter of what you want right now. Decent, easy to listen to, easy to incorporate surround sound for TV and movies? Or interesting, more revealing, but limited to a pair with no subwoofer speakers that will be a nice start and a great point of comparison for listening intently to music?
