Floorstanding tower speakers have notable advantages: placement is easy, you don’t need ancillary mounting or other such equipment, and their larger size allows for more/better components and often thus a superior design and build. And of course they just look cool and powerful. A downside, though, is that they tend to be expensive – many such flagship products crack the four or even five figure price barrier.
Pioneer has bucked that trend though with the 2012 release of the SP-FS52. In collaboration with renowned speaker expert Andrew Jones, Pioneer has created a flagship a floorstanding tower speaker with solid specs at a very competitive price.
Specs
Speaker type: passive, 3-way
Nominal power handling: 40 watts (approximated*)
Peak power handling: 130 watts
Impedance: 6 ohms
Sensitivity: 87 dB/W/m
Frequency response range: 40 – 20,000 Hz (+/- 3dB)
Unit weight: 26 lbs
Unit dimensions: 10.6 x 8.8 x 35.2 inches (depth x width x height)
Warranty: 1 year
*When nominal/RMS power isn’t specified by manufacturer, we use an approximation of ~30% of the specified peak/dynamic power for comparison purposes.
Review and Discussion
As a pair, these should comfortably fill most small to medium sized rooms. These are the kind of speakers that are mainly optimized for music, but might be underwhelming with cinema. Adding a subwoofer would certainly augment these in a great way, as is the case with most budget-tier speakers – see the links and resources section for more information on picking subwoofers.
They’re not the coolest looking tower speakers out there, but, they still look pretty slick. Admittedly we’re not a fan of the large oval grill foam that covers all the cones – 4 individual covers would look better – but to each their own. The cabinet has an interesting convex curved side design, but it’s hard to notice from the front, a minor interesting aesthetic feature nonetheless.
The SP-FS52s power rating and 6 ohm impedance is pretty run of the mill and they’ll be compatible with most stereo or av receivers. At ~26 lbs per unit they might take a bit of lugging to get into place but shouldn’t be too much trouble. The warranty on these speakers is 1 year, which is pretty much about as bare minimum as it gets.
Our Take
At less than $150 per, for what you get, these are honestly an awesome deal. Even though these speakers are coming up on 7 years old they remain one of the best selling and highly rated floorstanding tower speakers on the market (also worth mentioning is that speakers have long product lifespans, as utterly opposed to computers, phones, and most other electronics). If you’re not pining for the ultimate HiFi experience – many laypeople won’t notice the difference between great and *amazing* sound quality – and you’re trying to stick to a budget, it’s hard to go wrong with these.
See our current picks for the overall best budget tower speakers
