Purchased a pair of these speakers as part of my new Home Theater System. At first seeing these in the store I was turned off because I figured that the woofers were too small for my personal preference. Wow, was I pleasantly surprised by what I found. These speakers are not what they appear to be. The salesman turned them on for me in the store, and my first question to him was "are you driving a sub woofer with these?" He said no that it was just the speakers themselves. What makes these speakers great are two fold. One, the woofers are on the sides and much bigger then you would think. These passive radiator design give out some excellent base across the band range. But the big surprise to me was that each speaker is powered. It seems they each have a amp in them that when you split your sub-woofer output from the AV-Receiver, gives you duo sub woofers as well. In fact the it is much better then a sub woofer because it is coming from two sources instead of one, giving you more of a surround sound effect. And added feature is that each speaker has a volume effect dial on the back so that you can intensify the sub-woofer effect to your taste. When I got my system hooked up, and turned these on, I was very pleased with the results. Our living room is not huge but it is an open concept. We sit about 12ft from our big screen and these speakers deliver the performance in sound that I loved from the beginning. They are part of a 5.1 surround system and work great. And their style fits in with the Big Screen TV in that they both have a high gloss black finish.