Polk T15 Bookshelf Speakers $69/pr how good can they be?!?

gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
We've been spending some time on budget bookshelf speakers from the likes of Monoprice and Dayton Audio. Today,, we look at the Polk T15 bookshelf speakers, which are among the more affordable choices out there at $100 per pair ($69/pr on sale right now).

Loudspeaker manufacturing giant Polk Audio has the resources to engineer a good sounding low-cost speaker, but the question is what approach would they take? Polk pulls out a few tricks to optimize this speaker for the conditions that a low-cost bookshelf speaker will likely be used in, which are typically not the perfect placement and setting that hi-fi speakers usually require for great sound.

We go into extensive detail as to what Polk has done to make the T15 bookshelf speakers produce audiophile sound in imperfect circumstances. We also provide placement tips to maximize their sound quality based on objective measurements.

polk.jpg

Read:
Polk T15 Bookshelf Speaker Review
 
T

tochi

Audiophyte
Don't know when the article was first published. But the statement below is incorrect now.
"there is no corresponding center speaker in the Polk T series line-up"
T30 is the corresponding center channel speaker.
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
Don't know when the article was first published. But the statement below is incorrect now.
"there is no corresponding center speaker in the Polk T series line-up"
T30 is the corresponding center channel speaker.
  1. By James Larson — June 29, 2018. It's literally the top of the first page.
  2. You're probably correct, but it doesn't really matter. These speakers are so bad that only decent use for them is hight surrounds.
 
S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
Don't know when the article was first published. But the statement below is incorrect now.
"there is no corresponding center speaker in the Polk T series line-up"
T30 is the corresponding center channel speaker.
The T30 wasn't in the product line page when this article was written. Also, Polk reviewed the article before it was published, and I guessed they missed this too, because the T30 definitely was an existing product when this article was written.
 
davidscott

davidscott

Audioholic Ninja
  1. By James Larson — June 29, 2018. It's literally the top of the first page.
  2. You're probably correct, but it doesn't really matter. These speakers are so bad that only decent use for them is hight surrounds.
Might be ok for PC speakers also.
 
H

Hawlk

Audiophyte
I ran a impendence sweep on my DATS V2 for the Polk T15 . I am getting a low impendence just below 4 ohms . In your testing your graph is more desirable just below 6 ohms. The curve looks the same. I plan on using these cheap speakers for Atmos since I chose not to use ceiling recess speakers. I don.t want a 4 ohm load on my receiver. These days there are no small efficient 8 ohm speakers . Has anyone else measured these.
 
S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
These have also been measured by Audio Science review. They do measure a bit below what I have. Not too surprising that our measurements differ. In very low-budget speakers like these, there tends to be less manufacturing consistency from unit to unit.
 
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