Hi, my name is Eric, I'm a writer here at Crutchfield, and I'm here today to talk to
you about the KEF LS50 Wireless II speakers. These are a pair of powered speakers, which means that
the amplifier is built in. In some cases it's built into one speaker; in the case of the KEF
LS50 Wireless IIs, each one of these speakers has two amplifiers in it, which means that they get
perfect power so that they sound great, and you don't really have to worry about matching them up
with an amplifier. So the great thing about these speakers is that this is your entire system, and
it's really easy to set up, and you're ready to go very quickly once you take them out of the box.
You need to plug each speaker into a wall outlet, so you are going to need two free
outlets, because each one of these has its own power cord, and then you can choose to run the
cord between them or connect them wirelessly, and then just connect your TV, maybe your CD player,
whatever it is you want to listen to, and you're good to go. And in addition to the amplifiers, all
of the connections that you might need to connect your devices are on the speakers as well on the
back. There are a lot of different ways to get your favorite music coming out of these speakers.
there's an analog 3.5-millimeter input, and there's a coaxial and an optical digital input,
and then to make it even more convenient, if you then just want to be able to switch over to
what's on TV, there is an HDMI input with e-ARC, which is the latest way of making sure you can
connect to your TV with just one cable and hear the sound coming from that as well. And it's very
convenient these days to stream music wirelessly, which these are champs at. There's Bluetooth 4.2
with aptX, which makes everything sound great, and you can also use the built-in dual band Wi-Fi or
make a wired connection with the ethernet jack on the back to pull music off of your network.
The other connections you'll see, here there's a USB port for making firmware updates, there's
also a subwoofer output. Most powered speakers connect one to the other with a speaker wire, but
in this case you're going to use the included cat-6 cable, which uses a what looks like an
ethernet connector as well. However, there's another interesting thing that these can do, which is they
can connect to one another wirelessly, so you can do away with the cable altogether.
Now you may notice that these look a little different from your usual speakers, and that's
because they use what is called a Uni-Q driver array. That means that the woofer
and the tweeter are integrated together. If you look at them, you can kind of tell the tweeter's
right there in the middle of the woofer. The Uni-Q driver array helps expand your soundstage and
make it easier for your entire room to get into what they call the "sweet spot". Now I mentioned
that the amplifiers are built into these speakers and each driver has its own amplifier, in this case
each woofer gets 280 watts of amplification and each tweeter gets another 100. That's very
impressive, and that's going to not only make sure that you can play them loud, which of course is
something you're going to want to do from time to time, but also it controls the stop-start motion of
the driver so that you get far more accuracy. I had an opportunity to try out the original
KEF LS50 Wireless speakers, so it was nice to get a chance to do that again with the newer version, and
find out kind of what they've improved and what's different. One thing that has been maintained, that
was the thing that impressed me about the original speakers, is the bass output is incredible, and that
is still the same with these speakers. They've done some things to help with the mid-range
and the high frequencies as well, and these are kind of technical things, but you can see some of
it. There is a patented offset flexible port on the back of each speaker that helps with the mid-range
coloration. It just makes it sound smoother and better, and not to get too techy but the tweeter
has something called "Meta Material Absorption" technology that breaks up high-frequency
distortion, which is something you really don't want. The best way to control these speakers is
with the KEF Connect app, which you just download onto your smartphone or your tablet and control it
that way. It does come with a remote that does some of the basic features, like volume up and down and
source selection, but I find that the KEF Connect app really opens up the features and it's just
really easy to use and download, so that's the way to go. If we have further questions about whether
the KEF LS50 Wireless II speakers are for you, give us a call, chat with us, or send us an email
and one of our friendly knowledgeable advisors can help you make the right choice for you.