Klipsch the Fives II Speakers Review for Music, Movies, More (2026)

But the Fives aren’t perfect: Compared to other high-end speakers I’ve tried last year—some of which made me worry my Sheetrock would break—the Fives don’t generate as powerful a sound. The high notes at the end of Rosalía’s song “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti” also sounded a bit thin; when I played the same song on the Focal Mu-so Hekla speaker, the sound seemed to split air molecules.

I wasn’t disappointed with the sound quality of the music, but the comparisons were helpful nonetheless. For the price and size, I’ve always loved The Fives II for the music.

It won’t rock your home theater, but it’s solid for the price

For movies and shows, the new HDMI 2.1 eARC port more than justifies the higher price. (The original, the Fives, didn’t support Atmos and cost $800 a pair.)

In the movie War machine on Netflix, I noticed that the explosions didn’t really shake the room, but they seemed quite distinct. Even with two-channel audio, Dolby Atmos support created battle scenes in the film Uninterrupted on Netflix looks convincing, especially when a plane whizzes from left to right. I streamed the original Stranger movie using the HBO Max app on my phone, and because this movie originally used two-channel audio and not surround sound, I noticed that the dialogue was clear and perfectly centered between the two speakers.

During the movie Greenland 2: Migration on YouTube TV, a dinner scene in France had background music that seemed to come from another room, enhancing immersion. A minor problem was that during the film We bury the dead On the Fandango at Home app, the background dialog that likely plays over the side or rear speakers in a surround sound setup was a little hard to hear.

For video game testing, I connected to a TCL NXTVISION Artistic TV. The game Pragmats has a few early scenes where you shoot robots, and the lasers looked pretty convincing. At the start of the game Resident Evil Requiemthe eerie atmospheric sounds didn’t sound as convincing as a full surround sound setup. My main takeaway is that games play different sounds around the room, and the Fives II wasn’t as convincing at playing those sounds using multiple audio drivers as the Focal Mu-so Hekla soundbar.

Ultimately, comparing these speakers to a soundbar for theater sound, I’d say the Klipsch Fives II still have a way to go. But for music playback, you can’t go wrong at this price point. The speakers fit perfectly on a shelf, they didn’t clutter the room and music playback was organic, pure and loud. I ended up preferring The Fives II for music over recent bookshelf speakers from companies like Sony, KEF, and Edifier.

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