Best floorstanding speakers 2024: budget to premium (2024)

A good quality pair of floorstanders can instantly supercharge your hi-fi system and deliver room-filling sound.

Floorstanders tend to deliver greater scale, authority and more bass thanbookshelf speakersthanks to their larger cabinet volume, but you still need to choose wisely and make sure you pick the best floorstanding speakers for your budget and room size.

Perhaps you'rebuilding a hi-fi systemfrom scratch, or sizing up from abookshelf pairto a bigger model.Or, if you simply want to splash the cash on serious high-end speakers, we're here to help. It's worth noting that floorstanders tend to be pricier than their smaller standmount counterparts (the bigger size means more materials used and higher prices), but you'll find plenty of the best-performing options below starting from around £450 onwards.

Every pair of floorstanding speakers recommended below has been thoroughly tested byWhat Hi-Fi?'s expert reviewers in our dedicated listening rooms, so you can trust our buying advice. Read on for our round-up of the best floorstanders for every budget.

The quick list

You can see a quick breakdown of all the floorstanders on this list with a summary of what they’re best at and why we think they’re worth your money below. If you need more detail, just click the photo of a product to go to the in-depth entry.

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Best overall floorstanders

Q Acoustics' new 5000 series sits in between the budget 3000 series and the premium Concept range. The 5040 is the smaller of the two floorstanders in the range and should fit neatly into most rooms, with a solid and well-made build quality.

New to the range is the Continuous Curved Cone design for the mid/bass drivers. This new driver has a geometry that Q Acoustics claims to combine the rigidity advantages of a standard conical cone profile with the high-frequency break-up characteristics of a more flared design.

Q Acoustics' previous efforts have tended to be unfussy, but these 5040s need a bit more care with positioning and partnering equipment. Match them with more refined partnering electronics (these speakers can be rather transparent, impressively so), and the 5040 sound wonderfully clear and precise, with ample agility and grip to deliver a sense of great fun. We like the way these towers always sound composed and controlled, and that sense of organisation doesn’t falter when the music becomes demanding.It's a spacious, well-focused sound with impressive stereo imaging. Tonally, these floorstanders sit just on the lean side of neutral, but not so far as to cause issues.

While the more expensive Wharfedale Evo 4.4 provide a sophisticated alternative, Q Acoustics 5040 are even-handed performers that simply step out of the way of the music and let songs shine. When partnered with care they deliver a wonderfully expressive and insightful performance that’s class-leading at this level.

Read the fullQ Acoustics 5040 review

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Best budget floorstanders

Wharfedale's Diamond range is a great bet as a solid budget standmounter, but it wasn't until the Diamond 12.3 that the brand made a really outstanding affordable floorstander – we like it so much we've given it multiple Awards trophies now.

The Diamond 12.3 sound even more impressive than the renowned 12.1, and considering the 12.1 are five-star speakers, that's quite some praise. While competition at this price comes from the impressive Elac Debut 2.0 F5.2 and five-star Fyne Audio F302i, we still consider the Wharfedales to be supremely good value.

At 98cm tall, the 12.3 aren't massive speakers, but they benefit from having space to breathe. They benefit from a bit of inward angling too, but thanks to their wide sound dispersion you don't have to worry about being millimetre perfect.

Sonically, they're smooth, even-handed and wonderfully refined for the money. Feed them a poor signal and they are skilled at revealing the shortcomings without shouting about them. They’ll round off rough edges and downplay unwanted aggression without sounding like they’re smothering the life out of the music. Great if you want to partner your system's source with a floorstander pair without breaking the bank.

Read the fullWharfedale Diamond 12.3 review

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Best mid-price floorstanders

As you can see from this list, there's no shortage of talented floorstanding speakers on the market, and the Triangle Borea BR08 is another excellent pair that offers something special.

The cabinets look a little basic but look closer and you'll see that they're solid, well-made and neatly finished. The plinths simply bolt onto the bottom for extra stability, although we'd prefer the supplied spikes to be a little sharper to get through thick carpets.

A three-way design, the BR08 use two fibreglass-coned bass units aided by a front-firing reflex port, plus a 25mm silk dome tweeter. Their relatively high sensitivity means you should get good volume levels from even low-powered amps although their nominal 8 ohm impedance dips to a 3 ohm minimum, so you’ll still need to check for compatibility.

Give the speakers plenty of room to breathe (a good 40/50cm in all directions), angle them in towards the listener and you'll hear the Triangles at their best. We'd shy away from bright-sounding electronics, but find suitable partners and you'll be blown away by their entertaining sound. They display a sense of vigour and dynamic strength that many rivals fail to match.

Definitely worth an audition, although we'd also urge you to test out the Dali Oberon 5 as another entertaining alternative at this price range.

Read the fullTriangle Borea BR08 review

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Best premium floorstanders

PMC has something of a reputation for high-end hi-fi, and while the superb Prodigy 5 have wound up as our best premium floorstanders on this list, they're actually miraculously good value.

The priority with the Prodigy 5, much like their Prodigy 1 standmount siblings, has been to eke out as much sound-per-pound punch as possible, letting considerations over design and aesthetic flourishes fall away in the pursuit of the best audio you can get for the price.

And boy has the effort paid off. PMC has hit the sweetest of sweet spots with the Prodigy 5, balancing subtle details and musical flourishes with a perceptibly heightened sense of presence, poise and confidence. In terms of sonic performance, we didn't hear many better speakers this year, and it was the Prodigy 5's musical chops that really earned them that 2023 What Hi-Fi? Award.

Read our full PMC Prodigy 5 review

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Best high-end floorstanders

At this price point, you've got quite a few floorstanders to choose from, including the ProAc Response DT8 and Fyne Audio's F501S, both of which retail at under £3000 and which both nabbed a five-star review when we brought them in for testing.

Spendor's superb floorstanders, though, sound great, look great and are compact enough to fit into most homes. Refined yet entertaining, the top-of-the-line A7 continue the firm's knack for combining stunning clarity and subtlety with hugely enjoyable dynamics and rhythm.

There's a stunning level of detail on show. Each instrumental strand and vocal quirk is laid bare – musicians watch out, there really is nowhere to hide. The sound is clean and organised, while still packing plenty of punch to keep things entertaining.

Vocals are a particular highlight. They also time with pinpoint accuracy and are immensely transparent, without ever sounding too clinical. They're still full of expressive melodies and undulating dynamics that will keep your head nodding.

They're hardly what you would call 'cheap' but if you're in the market for a pair of top-notch floorstanders, the elegant Award-winning A7 should make their way to the top of your list.

Read the fullSpendor A7 review

How to choose the best floorstanding speaker for you

First things first, decide on a budget. Your components should be evenly matched, both tonally and in terms of price, so consider this before breaking the bank on a new pair of floorstanding speakers that the rest of your kit can't do justice.

You also need to make sure your floorstanding speakers fit your room. Most speakers require a degree of space to sound their best, so be sure not to buy speakers that are too big for your listening area. Large floorstanding speakers mean higher volumes but, again, you need the space so make sure there's room for your speakers to breathe.

There's also the choice between passive and active speakers. Most floorstanding speakers on this list are passive - they have no amplification inside, so require a separate amplifier to work. Active speakers with amplification (and sometimes DAC and streaming smarts) are increasingly popular and can connect straight to your source, no amp required, though they do require a connection to mains power. Check out our pick of thebest active speakersif you're curious about this alternative.

For a more detailed explanation of everything you should consider, check out ourcomplete guide to choosing the right speakers.

How we test floorstanding speakers

How we test floorstanding speakers

We have state-of-the-art testing facilities in London and Reading, where our team of experienced, in-house reviewers test the majority of hi-fi and AV kit that passes through our door – including floorstanding speakers.

What Hi-Fi?is all about comparative testing, so we listen to every pair of floorstanding speakers we review against the current leader in its field to gauge how it compares to the best-in-class competition. We keepWhat Hi-Fi?Award winnersin our stockrooms so we can always compare new products against ones we know and love. And we do our best to review as many new models in as many markets as possible to ensure our contextual knowledge is the best it can be.

We are always impartial in our testing and ensure we hear every pair of floorstanding speakers at its optimum, with sources we know and like. We test them in their best use case with different partnering source kit, whether that's with a record player, a music streamer or even CD player. We play plenty of different types of music through them, as well as try various placements to find the best position in the room for them to floursh. Naturally, we give them plenty of listening time (and time to run in), too.

All review verdicts are agreed upon by the team as a whole rather than an individual reviewer, to eliminate any personal preference and to make sure we are being as thorough as possible. There is no input from PR companies or our sales team when it comes to the verdict, withWhat Hi-Fi?proud of having delivered honest, unbiased reviews for decades.

You can read more abouthow we test and review products onWhat Hi-Fi?here.

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