Kicker isn’t an audio company we’d heard of before learning about the speaker reviewed herein, but the KB6000 has become a highly popular and quite performant outdoor speaker that sells for a very competitive price.
The cabinet is wall mountable with included swiveling C brackets and has an interesting trapezoidal shape that opens up towards the baffle, mainly we think to fit the rather large waveguide horn loaded tweeter. The cabinet uses a sealed design, which is generally standard with outdoor speakers so that the elements can’t creep into an open port. They don’t give specifics on the actual tweeter, but to us it looks like a fairly standard ~ 1 inch soft dome. The woofer is 6.5 inches, some kind of rubber/plastic polymer, once again fairly standard looking for a weather resistant speaker.
The all-in-all result is a two way speaker that has pretty impressive power and range for the price. Add to that a horn loaded tweeter and these will really be able to get forward and out into the yard. Kicker doesn’t specify a response variance, so the evenness the sound is kind of going to be a guess or depend on the actual enclosure they’re in. Bass will likely drop off before the quoted 55 Hz floor, but a 6.5 inch woofer that can still get there is about as good as it gets for budget outdoor speakers.
While the baffle is pretty large, the speakers themselves manage to remain relatively compact and light, so they shouldn’t be too hard to mount. The KB6000 is merely graded as weather resistant, so they should probably be mounted under the bezel of the roof and remain covered. They’ll do OK with a little weather, but while other more expensive outdoor speakers are built to resist a literal monsoon, these are probably best taken inside if the weather becomes severe. They’re easily detachable from the mounted C brackets for that reason. Also the 1 year warranty is pretty bare minimum.
The KB6000 is passive 8 ohm rated speaker, meaning you will need a receiver to power them and outdoor speaker wire to connect them. See the links below for a guide on how to do that.
Our Overall Take, As Compared To The Competition
When the KB6000 originally came out circa 2011, these seemingly no name speakers were the pretty clear choice for maximum power and distance for a minimal price. The only two other speakers that we’ve seen that can get louder are higher end, larger and heaver, and at the time considerably more expensive.
Up to now though, significant MSRP discounts across competitors has shrunk that price gap considerably, and even if a nice pair of Definitive Technology or Klipsch outdoor speakers are a bit more expensive, they might be a better value overall and they’ll probably last longer. Check out the links below for some alternative recommendations that are probably worth looking at.
Get the Kicker KB6000 outdoor speakers on Amazon (affiliate link)
Relevant Links and Resources
The Best Wired/Permanent Outdoor All Weather Speakers
Picking The Best (And Correct) Outdoor All-Weather Speaker Wire
