If you’re looking to buy a five-star, Award-winning pair of floorstanding speakers but can’t afford to spend more than a grand, then we'd strongly recommend checking out the Q Acoustics 5040.
The speakers are still selling at their best price ever across multiple retailers, including, Peter Tyson, Sevenoaks Sound and Vision and Richer Sounds, which are all offering them for £789. That's a healthy £210 discount on the speakers' launch price.
The deal means the 5040 are significantly cheaper than their direct rivals, the five-star Fyne Audio F501E which currently cost £999 at Peter Tyson.
For your money you get a solid pair of floorstanding speakers with surprisingly capable hardware considering their price.
The flagship feature is their atypical Continuous Curved Cone mid/bass driver design, which is a departure from the brand's previous midrange hardware that radically changes the 5040s’ sonic character.
The speakers performed excellently during our checks, with the 5040 delivering excellent clarity and detail resolution as well as blissfully expressive dynamics when paired well during our tests.
Hence our reviewers’ conclusion:
“The Q Acoustics 5040 are even-handed performers that simply step out of the way of the music and let it shine. When partnered with care they deliver a wonderfully expressive and insightful performance that’s class-leading at this level."
This is a key reason we gave them the What Hi-Fi? best floorstanding speaker £500-£1000 Award last year.
Our only word of caution is that we really mean it when we say “partnered with care”. The speakers offer 91dB/W/m sensitivity and have a claimed nominal impedance of 6 ohms that drops to a minimum of 3 ohms. In non-technical terms that means they partner best with a fairly muscly amplifier.
We got the best results when matching them with price appropriate, powerful amps – specifically the Cambridge Audio CXA81. After that they still required very careful room placement to truly shine.
If you don’t heed our advice be warned, the 5040’s neutral tone and impressive levels of transparency for speakers this price will lay bare any shortcomings further up your audio chain.
That caveat aside, unless you’re willing to spend more, the Q Acoustics 5040 are a fantastic set of floorstanding speakers well worth considering, especially at their current price.
MORE:
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