What We Like
What We Don’t Like
Monoprice has just about everything, so it should come as little surprise they’ve added an inexpensive subwoofer to their line. Unsurprisingly, their rendition is a responsive little speaker, making it a serious contender for best subwoofer under $100.
The Monoprice 8-Inch subwoofer features an unobtrusive black, wood grain finish with a removable cloth grille in the front. Small and sleek, Monoprice has added their logo at the bottom of the grille. On the inside, the 8-inch driver is offset to the upper left corner with a port occupying the lower left corner. The back holds volume and frequency knobs, an attached power cable, speaker inputs, and RCA line-inputs. The inclusion of an all black heatsink is also nice to see.
The look of this subwoofer is elegant and subtle in a way that even more expensive options fail to fully realize. While the subwoofer does look a bit stock, the branding on the grille is minimal enough to not offend, but still makes it look like more than a black box. The heatsink on the back is a very nice addition, although not super necessary considering the low power of the subwoofer.
Feature-wise, the 8-inch subwoofer from Monoprice is a little barren. Auto signal sensing is present, meaning the speaker will go into standby when it doesn’t sense any audio signal. A front port is also present which is more than most speakers in this price point. Tunable crossover frequency is a nice addition with a range of 50 Hz – 150 Hz.
Outside of that, there is little in the way of features here. A sub-harmonic enhancement option would nice, as well as some additional filter options to tune the subwoofer to your tastes. The lack of features, while expected, leave you with just what this subwoofer has to offer. While what it has to offer is an excellent value, it would nice to see some additional controls to tweak the sound more.
Still, the inclusion of auto signal sensing allows this speaker to go beyond just a box that puts out a lot of low-end.
The performance of this subwoofer isn’t the best out there, but it’s certainly good considering the dirt cheap price. The built-in 60 watt amplifier won’t shake your house, but it can get loud enough to compete with most systems out there.
Really, the disappointing area of this subwoofer is in the lack of low-end. It does produce sub frequencies, but a cutoff at 50 Hz leaves a lot to be desired for those looking for a lot of bass. However, this cutoff does tighten up the overall response of the subwoofer which is better than an overinflated sound.
This subwoofer offers a lot for how cheap it is. Competent, although slightly lacking, low-end response is enough to satisfy most casual listeners. For the price, this subwoofer is more than enough to take the listening experience to a new level.
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