I use these for watching rented movies. HiFi VHS fed to my Acurus preamp (which has two sets of outputs), then fed to a 60W Hafler. Hafler feeds a modified Radio Shack passive subwoofer and then on to the LX5's. Radio Shack subwoofer had to be modified because it's too efficient for use with the LX5's. Both were bought on sale for a bargain price. LX5 tweeter is awesome, especially if speaker placed properly. 5" woofer leaves a lot to be desired. I wouldn't want these as a main system, but what these do for VHS HiFi soundtracks is amazing. My main system is MUCH more expensive.

I am the king of skeptics when it comes to radio shack. For a while, I fell into the Sereophile "Everything just makes noise, but the expensive stuff is better at it" mindset. I demo'd these little guys sans sub. I saw the potential as superb satellites right away! The lieaum tweeter is a joy, with fast response, and WIDE dispersion.
I have a Paradigm Pw2200 sub, and x-30 crossover. I did the high pass at 120hz, so the LX5's get no bass. The sub is set@80hz low pass. Talk about an awesome combo!!! man, the detail and power are superb!
Recommendation: by these LX5's as a satellite, and get a crossover, and a powered sub. I paid $650 for my Paradigm PW2200, but a PS1000 (10") will do great, and it costs much less. This system I have doesn't need alot of power and works FAR, FAR beyond what I paid for it. Musical, accurate, fast for any kind of tune. The lx-5's as stand alones would get 3 stars, not big enough for bass/full bodied sound. As a satellite: 5 stars! I bought them on sale, and have NO regrets, they outperform many EXPENSIVE 3 ways in this capacity.

I purchased these speakers today at RS for Cdn$ 90 each, and hooked them up as my "B" mains to compare them to my Canton 270i speakers, which are 10 years old. DO NOT USE THESE SPEAKERS AS A MAIN SET UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. They are way too weak in the low and mid ranges. I then put them in the back corners as my rear satellites, and they performed much better. The real steal of these speakers (as everyone else here has been saying), is the Lineaum tweeter. Paired with the 5' woofer, they give excellent highs, augmented by the mid-range. I do like them as rear surrounds.
Any one who thinks these speakers will be OK as a main set are sadly mistaken...

Good value, but not as much as every one else here is saying, I don't think....

I would like to amend my last comments.
I listened to a range of music tonight, from Sade, Simply Red, Jamaroqui, and Chopin. I listened for quite a while, and got used to the different sound that the LX-5's put out. I think that they are really quite decent, but not as mains in a large room as the low end is just not there. Obviously, with a sub woofer they would be better, but I don't think that the quality of the box and its good tweeter make them good satellites.

Most importantly: the ribbon tweeter should be around ear level to get the best imaging. If they are too low to the ground, or too close to the wall, you won't get the full potential that they can provide.

I'm gonna give 'em 5 speakers for value, but 4 for quality. Really good deal now, especially as they're half price in Canada.

After reading great reviews for these little wonders I picked a pair up on sale. I am very pleased with their sound. I listen to them in my small living room at moderate levels. I'm using a clean old dynaco integrated amp. they are so clean and clear and spacious. You have to play around a little to get them away from the back wall and help them resonate the space. They lack bass when turned up loud, so if I want to rock I take them in my family room with my NAD amp and sit them on top of my big AR92 speakers, the tweeters add so much to the old ARs. In the future I will use them on the rear of a HT set up.I give them a 4 rating!!

I really like these speakers for the money. The highs are solovely, especially for classical music. I don't listen to
rock so they may or may not be good for that. The sense of
air is spacious. They are fast. Mids are definitely inferior,
and cause you to ache over Radio Shack marketing decisions.
But don't be deterred by that fact (or the Radio Shack heritage).
Ever since the awesome CD3400, I have been a RS fan. These LX5
are not full-range and don't try to be. They are probably much
better with a sub, but even without, they offer something special that
can't be had in other gear at this price. That's my criteria for
a high recommendation. But I will say that overall, I prefer the
cheaper LX4 (now discontinued), because of its more balanced presentation.

The lx5's are okay but not great. Don't give you the full effect that you can get from better speakers. I give it a three

Just got these along with the Optimus lx8s'. Really sound good. The music in my 18 x 18 room is "everywhere". It is just about impossible to tell where the sounds are coming from..anyway I'm very pleased.

Normally, I myself would wonder what kind of self deluded audiophile would actually consider buying speakers from Radio Shack, but I noticed that they had the LX5II speakers on sale through the month and I had actually read some positive things about the Optimus speakers. Secondly, I was looking for a rear channel set of speakers to replace the bookshelfs that I had been using which were not really made for home theatre. Thirdly, I figured if they didn't meet my standards, they were returnable.
The salesperson at Radio Shack did play them in the store for me where they sounded very limited and a bit murky. Nevertheless, Radio Shack is not exactly set up as a fine demonstration salon with speakers all over the place and very average electronics with which to demonstrate them. Suffice it to say though, that I was not expecting too much wehn I took them home.

After unpacking them, the first thing I noticed was the impressive construction and the innovative ribbon tweeter from Linaeum. Apparently, the economies of scale come into play here as, years ago, I remember anything with a ribbon tweeter being fairly expensive. As I went to hook these up, I appreciated the true gold plated binding posts which are often lacking in lower cost speakers. Based on vision presentation, these speakers appealed to my higher end instincts.

Now came the true test. I hooked them up as rear channels and immediately noticed an improvement over my monopolar bookshelf speakers. The sound was airy and radiant, probably owing to the dipolar ribbon. Now being played through a Nakamichi AV receiver I picked up on an internet auction, I had what seemed to be a pleasing home theatre arrangement for less than I once paid for a single speaker.

Impressed but still not satisfied, I had to put these to a more revealing test - as left and right speakers in a two channel stereo set up, playing an audio CD. Again, I expected a very compromised presentation. Was I ever wrong. The sound was expansive, almost to the point of equating with the sound production of my much larger (and much higher end) speakers. As you would expect, bass was lacking but music was not. From the mid bass on up, the speaker imaged very well, was not strained or tinny and produced a very clean sound, similar to what one would expect of a so called high end speaker. Suffice it to say that the speaker sounded much bigger than its size would suggest. As with a good high end speaker of the smaller variety, the lack of very low bass was not all that apparent owing to the quality of sound presented in the more critical middle and higher frequencies.

These results begged for one final test - amplification through my separate amp and preamp. The finding here was quite interesting. The presentation of sound took on a different character. Image placement was very sharp but the top to bottom image was now smaller, yet still bigger than you would think from this small a speaker. Now amplified by a 45 W/ch class A amp, I had to turn the preamp volume up to greater extent to get the same volume of sound as with the receiver. The bottom line here is that despite the much higher price of the electronics, the sound was not neceessarily better. In fact, for reasons that I can't explain, these speakers seemed better mated with the more electronic character of a mid-fi AV receiver than with more musical separates.

I have now moved the LX5IIs back to the rear where they will predominantly dwell. Certainly, for this chore they are more than adequate. The lesson learned here is that the Optimus speakers can be taken seriously. Yes, there may be finer speaker on the market, but to get to a more impressive level, omne must be ready to shell out hundreds more. At their price, especially when on half price sale, these speakers are a tremendous bargain and don't even feel like much of a compromise from a quality standpoint.

Bear in mind, that these are the newer LX5IIs which recently replaced the slightly smaller, but similarly designed LX5 - perhaps these virtues apply to that speaker as well, but I can only speak for the newer offering.

For the value they represent in all regards, I can only give the Optimus Pro LX5II a 5 star rating.

I have owned a pair of Radio Shack Optimus PRO LX5 speakers for about a year now, so I decided it's time to throw in my $0.02. But before I get rolling, let me just say that these little speakers are THE BEST value for your money, especially when they are on sale for $75 USD.
When I went out to buy a pair of replacements for a pair of tried and true Infinity bookshelves, I had three criteria that had to be met: 1) The speakers must be as small as possible. 2)The speakers must be as inexpensive as possible. 3)The speakers must sound better than anything else I've ever heard. (I never said they were REASONABLE critera...)

After an extensive search that included all the usual suspects: Paradigm, Energy, Infinity, Polk, Bose, JBL, B&W, NHT, BIC, M&K, etc., I found myself owning a pair of LX5's. I didn't have any intention of auditioning ANYTHING at the Radio Shack store. I saw a nice little blurb about the LX5's in an Audiophile magazine article about the best audio stuff for the $$$ and decided to check them out - just for the fun of it.

Yes, the weakness of the LX5 have been spoken of by countless reveiewers: no bass, muddy midrange, bright highs, etc., etc. However, I like bright speakers and the midrange only starts falling apart at LOUD volume levels. I usually listen to my stereo at medium to low levels, so I've been very pleased with the little 5" woofer.

I also must admit that I knew from day one that I was going to end up buying a subwoofer with whatever speaker I decided to buy. So bass reproduction was definately not a priority. The PRO LX5's don't even try to do bass. They cut off around 90Hz on the low-end. Soon after buying the LX5's I purchased a demo Velodyne VA806 subwoofer at Circuit City that mates PERFECTLY with the LX5's. Actually, the VA806 is more of a "bass enhancement device" rather than a true subwoofer - for it does not put out much bass under 39Hz!!! It has a mere 6" active driver that creates most of the bass--but the bass it produces is absolutely distortion free! I couldn't make that little sucker sound bad at ANY volume level - it produces the cleanest, tightest bass I've ever heard. I don't even miss the extra 20Hz that a REAL subwoofer would give me. Sure, the Apache attack helicopters in the Godzilla movie would sound a bit more realistic if I were to have a 12" subwoofer, but in terms of being "musical" the VA806 performs most nicely.

Ah yes, music. That's why I purchased the PRO LX5's - to play music. (I also use them as the left & right mains in my surround sound system.) I have never heard such realistic reproduction of brass & other metalic instruments as I've heard from the LX5. I listen to a lot of jazz & classical, and I especially like a good jazz trumpet. No speaker I listened to does a better job at reproducing a brass instrument. None. Zero. Zilch. Wynton Marsallis'
trumpet has never sounded so good. And these speakers were made for Arturo Sandoval. Drums and cymbals are extremely well reproduced too. You can almost see the drumsticks in the drummer's hands.

The audiophile standard "Blue Cafe" by Patricia Barber sounds extremely nice coming from the LX5's and VA806. Patricia's voice is so light an airy you'd think she were some sort of disembodied spirit. All tracks sound absolutely incredible. And those wonderfully bright horns that backup Harry Connick Jr. make your eardrums bleed--as they should.

Yes, I've even played Stevie Ray Vaughn, Led Zeppelin and Sting through the LX5's -- all sounding very good; though Zeppelin could use a bit more subwoofer than my dinky VA806.

I've even gone so far as to play my favorite recording VERY LOUDLY of Bach's Toccatta and Fugue in D minor by Karl Richter through the LX5's; the organ sounds like its in my living room. And the LX5's make my living room sounds like an ancient German cathedral.

If you have a small space and a small budget, there are no finer speakers on the market. They easily earn a five star rating.

By the way, if your into home theatre (HT), the Radio Shack people have one of the absolute best deals on an entry level speaker setup for HT, and they don't even know it. When on sale, you can buy four PRO LX5's for a grand total of $300 USD! You can get the extremely awesome Optimus CS5 center channel on sale for $100!!! (That center channel sounds WAY better than many $300 and $400 centers I've heard) And you can get the Optimus front firing 10" powered
subwoofer for a mere $200 when on sale. Add it all up, and you can get a six speaker setup for a mere $600! Not only is it a good value, but it will ABSOLUTELY DESTROY the infamous $1400 Bose Acoustimas 15 in terms of sound quality. The $1600 Polk Audio RM7500 system is also no match for the bargain basement speaker from Optimus. (Though Polk does have a better sub-woofer...) The well liked Energy Take-5 system will pale in comparison as well. Yes, I've listened to them all.

For those of you NOT biased against satelite/subwoofer systems (and even for those of you who are...) there is an awesome system made by B&W called "Solid Solutions" which is by far the best value in a TRUE satelite/subwoofer setup that money can buy. It was the only speaker system, other than the LX5's that made an impression on me. I highly encourage everyone out there to find a dealer who has the Solid Solutions in stock, and take a listen. You'll be impressed. Those of you who don't like bright speakers will prefer it to the LX5.