A couple of weeks ago I was on an away day with the rest of the What Hi-Fi? team. We held it at the KEF Music Gallery in central London, a place I’ve been lucky enough to visit (and admire) before. It’s a fantastic space where KEF showcases different speakers to existing and potential customers. There are two amazing demonstration rooms, one of which features a pair of its towering Muon loudspeakers alongside multiple subwoofers and custom-install speakers.
As I was walking around the display area in the bowels of the gallery, one pair of KEF speakers stood out from the crowd. And, surprisingly, it wasn’t the £180,000 Muon; it was the KEF LS60 Wireless. I was lucky enough to hear these high-tech towers when we tested them at launch back in 2022, but it wasn’t just their sound I was blown away by. Bumping into them (not literally) in the KEF Music Gallery reminded me just how much of an impressive feat of engineering they were at the time and still are now. And I think this needs to be reiterated.
I can’t remember many pairs of speakers having such a visual impact on me over the past couple of years, although I have to say that the Focal Diva Utopia, which we have recently tested, are also mightily impressive in the flesh.
Without question, the LS60 wireless still provide that wow factor, which I think modern, forward-thinking hi-fi should possess. In the Music Gallery, they were placed next to the company’s R11 Meta floorstanders, which are attractive enough speakers in their own right, but what I couldn’t quite get over was just how slim and slender the LS60 cabinets are in comparison. Yes, they have a wider base-plate at the bottom to give them a secure footing, but the main tower sections measure just 13cm across. By modern speaker standards they are ridiculously slim. Today’s towers seem to be more about large drivers, and even larger cabinet volumes.
That hasn’t always been the case, though. Back in the 2000s, there was a trend from some brands for smaller, thinner speakers that paired a tweeter with a small pair of mid/bass drivers. The quality varied massively, from memory, but that’s not something you need to worry about with these KEFs.
The British brand put a lot of time, effort and money into getting the engineering just right for these wireless wonders. Not only did it create the smallest-ever version of its Uni-Q driver just for this model but it also used its innovative Uni-Core driver arrays, which it purposely engineered to deliver a huge amount of bass from small enclosures. As we explain in our LS60 Wireless review, “they’re designed to deliver maximum bass from small enclosures, combining force cancellation (the drivers are mounted back to back), a shared motor and two completely different, concentrically arranged voice coils (one for each driver).”
KEF even positioned the drivers equidistantly around the Uni-Q driver array – an arrangement you also see in its flagship (£30,000 / $35,000) Blade Meta loudspeakers. The reason for this we also mentioned in our review: “the positioning of the drivers in this way means that lows, mids and highs all appear to radiate from a single point toward the listener. The benefit of this is you can deliver precise imaging and accurate sound over a wide listening area.” And the proof was in the listening, with the speakers presenting “an immersive and focused stereo image that rival products could only dream of. You feel right in the middle of the action with the LS60 Wireless, like you’re trapped in a bubble of sound that you hope won’t burst.”
Yes, at £6000 / $7000 / AU$9995 they were relatively expensive at launch, but there aren’t many brands that have gone to such lengths to make a product that feels so modern and forward-thinking and is executed so well. And that’s what I still love about them. They look like the kind of product that someone who has grown up in a wireless audio world should want to buy. Not everyone wants separates, and in my opinion KEF hit the nail right on the head with these speakers, and was brave for trying something different. And that’s before you get to all the streaming smarts built in, and a control app that you could use to carry out everything you need to get up and running.
We are now two years down the line from our original review, and the good news is that the price of the LS60 Wireless seems to have dropped and settled at the £4000 / $4999 / AU$9100 mark. I realise this is still a serious amount of money, but this is no ordinary pair of speakers. For any music fan who has grown up listening to their music wirelessly on a pair of headphones or a single wireless speaker and who wants to continue going down the wireless path, the LS60 Wireless is the kind of product that could and should capture their imagination. If you liked the idea of the speakers when they first came out but felt they were a little pricey, I think now is the perfect time to reconsider if that reduced price is more achievable.
The KEFs wowed me when they first came out and I think they deserve even more respect now. They still offer something unique and special in the world of wireless speakers. The fact they are so compact, look so modern, pack in so much technology and sound so immersive and entertaining is a rare combination. I can’t wait to see what KEF has planned next for its Wireless line.
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