Monitor Audio Bronze 500

Five years after Monitor Audio’s Bronze 5G, it’s all change again. But how will the new, bigger Bronze speaker stack up?

Affordable is often mistaken as a euphemism for cheap, but in reality it’s the place where the bond between brand and customer is either made or broken and cheap is most definitely not the impression that needs to linger. You can draw a parallel with house wine. It may be the least costly on the menu, but woe betide the establishment that supplies cheap plonk.

Monitor Audio has understood this from the beginning of the Bronze series back in late 1999 and it breaks the formula down to four basic rules. First, make an inexpensive speaker that, in build and finish, looks and feels better than a rival’s pricier offering. Second, use a simpler version of the advanced driver tech trickled from upstream models. Third, make sure it flatters inexpensive kit but won’t embarrass itself as the quality of the user’s system grows around it. And fourth, voice it for wide consumer appeal.

The Bronze 500 teams a 25mm C-CAM gold dome tweeter with a brace of 140mm C-CAM mid/bass drivers to achieve a claimed frequency range of 45Hz to 25kHz (-6dB). The 500’s squatter proportions are largely down to the extra girth of its 205mm main drivers. Thanks to that extra driver real estate, it reaches down to a claimed 25Hz with a sensitivity rating of 90dB as opposed to the 200’s 88dB. The 25mm C-CAM gold dome tweeter is shared between the two models.