I am not an audiophile, and I don't own audiophile equipment, but I do like music and have a very basic home theater setup in a small room. I'm getting a new TV, so it was time to consider what to do about the audio situation.

I had briefly flirted with the idea of replacing my old Kenwood receiver and Advent Mini speakers with one of the new-fangled Home Theater In a Box solutions. I looked at the big-box retailer selections and after examining and listening to the speakers in these kits, I knew that wasn't the route for me.

Instead, I purchased a pair of Polk M10's, and they were OK. The music didn't come alive, but it wasn't muddy either. They sounded better than my old Advents, so I was happy.

Then not a week later I found a great deal on a set of Monitor 30's. The first thing I noticed about the Monitor series is that they are extremely solid. The M10's aren't lightweights by any means, and these were much heavier and felt like I could use them to jack up my car if I ever needed to.

The gold binding posts are 5 way; meaning they'll take all sorts of inputs and clips - I just screwed the posts in on top of the wire. They can be bi-amped as well, but that's something I have no knowledge of.

If you take the grills off, you'll notice that Polk has placed the 5.25" woofer atop the tweeter, giving the face an appearance of being upside down. The woofer is a silver composite material. The tweeter is a 1" fabric/polymer. It is a handsome speaker, with black (or Cherry) laminate and silver face. The grills match my M10's, which is a nice touch.

They are also ported in the rear, so you should be careful not to mount them directly on to a wall, or placed on stands within a foot of a wall.

When I got them home, I moved the M10's to the surround positions and the Monitor 30's were hooked up as the mains.

The difference wasn't shocking, but it was a solid improvement just the same. The sound is tighter. Very good imaging, very lively. The ride cymbals were right there, hand claps were sharp; I could feel the kick drum.

I turned up the volume to uncomfortable levels to see how the Monitors would handle the power. My old amplifier was cutting out before the speakers would. That was a big difference between these and the M10's, which would distort much earlier up the volume ladder.

The rear port provides some bass, but you're still going to want a subwoofer if using this for anything bigger than a small office.

These speakers would be perfect for these situations:
* Smaller (under 200 sqft) rooms
* Lower powered amplifiers
* Playing lossy MP3 files with no guilt.

Polk also has audiophile class speakers, the LSi class, costing several times as much; but I don't really have any source worthy of such an outlay. Most of the time I'm listening to 128kbps mp3 files and to my ears, these Monitors are the perfect fit for my needs.