KEF R5

Far from being shy and retiring, the three-way R5 is a quite astonishing amount of floor standing real estate for the money.

What’s more, it appears to be built and finished to a standard that sets a high bar for rivals to follow. Colour coordinated drivers and flawless piano black lacquer gloss, too? Glorious. Let’s call it a value perk that big companies find easier to offer.

As with every current KEF speaker, the centrepiece is a 12th-generation Uni-Q driver array. In this instance comprising a 125mm midrange element with 25mm aluminium dome tweeter seated in the middle. Behind the tweeter is a damped cavity to reduce the effects of the engineered gap between the two drivers. KEF has been using and evolving the Uni-Q principle for decades, a firm believer in its advantages with dispersion and integration. Even its fixture-hiding trim is shaped to reduce diffraction.

Above and below the Uni-Q, in a D’Appolito arrangement, are twin 130mm hybrid aluminium bass drivers – hybrid because they consist of a shallow concave aluminium skin joined to a paper cone in a bid to optimise rigidity and lightness with low resonance and thereby reduce distortion and improve precision. Sensitivity is quoted at 87dB with a nominal 8ohm impedance, while frequency response is 52Hz-28kHz.