In this review, we will be comparing A500 and Sonos Five, two Powered Bookshelf speakers from Buchardt and Sonos. Being Powered speakers, they both have built-in amplifiers so you don't need an external power amp or an integrated amp to power them.
Let's have a brief look at the main features
of Buchardt A500 and Sonos Five first before getting into our more
detailed comparison.
In the following sections, we will get into more detail in order to better understand how the Buchardt A500 and Sonos Five compare and hopefully end up with enough arguments to decide which one of these loudspeakers is the better choice for you.
Drivers
One of the fundamental differences between these two speakers is that A500 is a 3-way design whereas the Sonos Five is a 2-way speaker. 3-way designs utilize a midrange driver in addition to the tweeter and woofer on 2-way designs. Designing a crossover for a 3-way speaker is a complicated process and generally increases the overall cost of the speaker.
| Driver |
Buchardt A500 |
Sonos Five |
|
Driver Setup
|
3-way
|
2-way
|
|
Tweeter
|
0.74-inch
|
3 x 0.8-inch
|
|
Midrange
|
1 x 6-inch |
- |
|
Woofer
|
1 x 6-inch
|
3 x 2.75-inch
|
A500 features a 0.74" fine weave soft fabric textile aluminum waveguide Tweeter , a 6" Midrange and 1 x 6" paper Woofer with a Crossover frequency at 150Hz and 1800Hz. On the other hand, the Sonos Five features a 3 x 0.8" Dome Tweeter and 3 x 2.75" Cone Woofer .
Frequency Response
A500 has a frequency range of 25-40k Hz whereas Sonos Five has a frequency range of . With a minimum frequency of Hz, the Sonos Five can go significantly deeper on the low side and provide stronger bass compared to the A500's min frequency of 25Hz.
Below graphs depict how these two speakers compare with the max, min and average values of the Min and Max Frequencies of other speakers in the Bookshelf class in our database.
Size of a speaker can sometimes become an important decision factor due to space constraints or in some cases purely for esthetic reasons. In this section, we are going to compare Buchardt A500's and Sonos Five's external dimensions. Buchardt A500 has external dimensions of 365.0 x 180.0 x 280.0mm ( 14.4 x 7 x 11inch) whereas Sonos Five has external dimensions of 201.6 x 363.5 x 174.6mm ( 7.9375 x 14.3125 x 6.875inch) .
Sonos Five is 163.4mm shorter and 105.4mm less deeper than Buchardt A500 but it is also 183.5mm wider.
Base Surface Area Comparison
Base surface area of a loudspeaker may become a determining factor when the space in your room or desk is limited.
The base surface area of the Buchardt A500 is approximately 504.0cm2 / 78.1inch2 and base area of the Sonos Five is approximately 634.7cm2 / 98.4inch2. The A500 requires 21% less surface area than the Sonos Five which gives it a small advantage on placement in tight spaces.