The Polk Audio OWM3 speakers have been designed to answer the prayers of those who can’t find space to properly place five speakers and a subwoofer in their lounge. Sometimes the speakers are too big, the room too small or the spouse a little too house-proud. My rear speakers were cunningly located in a box in the hall cupboard for two years for canine-related reasons, so I know all about missing speaker misery.

Polk’s solution to the problem of speaker placement is to make the OWM3s small and very flexible in terms of positioning thanks to their truncated cabinets. They’re inexpensive, which is great in a 5.1 or even 7.1 environment, and they can be placed in the following positions: angled wall mount, corner mount, horizontal wall mount, vertical wall mount, shelf mount, horizontal shelf mount or on an articulated wall-mount bracket. Phew. If one of those won’t work in your room, maybe you need to contemplate moving the home theatre out of the pantry.
The plastic enclosures weigh in at less than two kilos, so they don’t demand beefy mounting hardware, but that lightweight construction theoretically shouldn’t bode well for their sonic abilities.

The OWM3s proved the old adage about not judging books by their covers. I unceremoniously planted them on the floor and hooked them up to my stereo system to run in while I settled to do some writing. After a few minutes, the sounds from the front of the room had raised an eyebrow, which was followed shortly by a beady eye poking from behind my laptop to see what was going on. Aimee Mann’s Lost In Space CD had changed from background music to the only thing on my mind because of the sweetness of the OWM3 midrange and treble.

There’s very little bass, but from a satellite speaker that only goes down to 100Hz, you wouldn’t expect much (they’re designed to work with a subwoofer, after all). Ignore the missing bass and the sonics are excellent at this price and would make quite a few small home theatre speakers green with envy.

If a set of speakers makes beautiful music, they’ll generally make out well with movies and multichannel theatre, and connected to my Denon receiver and Polk subwoofer, the OWM3s proved to be perfect partners. Placed close to a wall they were easy to integrate with the sub, and music and movies sounded fab as the bottom end of the sound spectrum filled out.

They lack the impact and scale you’ll get with bigger cabinets or floorstanders, but from a little plastic box the performance is bang on the money, and the whole point of the OWM3s is that they’ll fit in where the bigger boxes won’t.

BRETT GIDEON

TECH SPECS

OWM3
Multi-Purpose Speakers
$399

TWEETER: 25mm silk dome
MID/BASS DRIVER: 114mm polypropylene cone
POWER HANDLING: 20-100W
FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 100Hz- 20kHz +/-3dB
IMPEDANCE: 8 Ohms
SENSITIVITY: 89dB/1W at 1m
DIMENSIONS: 254 x 178 x 104 mm (H/W/D)
WEIGHT: 1.8kg each
FINISHES: Black, white

CONTACT

www.easternhifi.co.nz

PROS

• Flexible placement and mounting options

• Very good sound at the price

CONS

• Will need careful setup with a properly placed sub

VERDICT

• The OWM3s are a nice concept at a nice price – they’re well worth considering if you’re pressed for space

This review is from Tone issue #74.

What do you think?