The Klipsch R-28F floor standing speakers yielded consistently good results in both of our listening tests. They are very efficient, and the cabinet design is attractive, especially when the speaker grille is removed. Their top-notch design features and clear, smooth audio reproduction make them one of the best options for less than $1,000 per pair.
For our music test, we sampled songs from a wide variety of music genres, including jazz, electronic, hip-hop, blues, rock and classical. The Klipsch towers produced the best results out of all the models we tested. They performed particularly well when we played music with synthesized bass, like Laxx’s “Semi Auto” and Beck’s “Morning.” Songs with low and hard-hitting bass can make inferior floor speakers sound muddy and hide midrange content behind the veil of low frequencies. That was not the case with the R-28F. These floor standing speakers produced the clearest and most concise bass frequencies in our review.
The audio content in action movies spans a wide frequency range, especially during fight and chase scenes. Because of this, we played a clip from a chase scene in “Mad Max: Fury Road” for our panel of reviewers. During this test, these Klipsch speaker towers delivered chest-thumping bass alongside accurate and clear dialogue. Some of the speakers we tested had a hard time projecting the important dialogue through the thick cloud of booming low-frequency material. It is important to feel the boom of a gunshot and hear the low-pitched growl of a V8 engine in a chase scene, but you don’t want to miss important dialogue because those effects are produced at disproportionately loud volumes. The R-28F towers also ranked as the best speakers for treble clarity in this test.
These speakers have the highest sensitivity rating in our review: 98 dB. This is exceptional in terms of power efficiency. Every time you increase the volume by 3 dB, you must double the power. For example, a speaker rated at 87 dB uses 10 times more power to reach the same volume as a speaker rated at 98 dB. In general, speakers with high sensitivity ratings are more power efficient, better performing and longer lasting than those with low sensitivity.
The Klipsch towers operate on a continuous 150 watts of power and can handle peak bursts up to 600 watts. While some floor standing speakers we reviewed, like the BIC Acoustech PL-89 II, can handle more power, the R-28F are not underpowered by any means, especially since they have such a high sensitivity rating. This results in good sound quality at high volumes.
You can easily power these speakers with an entry- to mid-level AV receiver. The AV receiver we used to test the speaker towers in our review can send 160 watts per channel at 8-ohm. It had no problem powering these towers. In fact, we were able to play music at well over 110 dB without distorting the sound. That is as loud as a rock concert.
These home tower speakers each have two 8-inch IMG woofers and a single 1-inch tweeter that handles much of the midrange and all high frequencies. Low-frequency drivers that are larger than 6 inches generally produce better bass response, and in this case, that is certainly true.
The crossover point for these speakers is 1,800Hz. This means the woofer handles all frequencies below 1,800Hz, and frequencies above that are sent to the tweeter. This crossover point seems low for a woofer because it doesn't handle much of the midrange content, although the tweeter does a magnificent job producing both midrange and high frequencies. The tweeter in the R-28F yielded the best results in our music test and movie test, so the low-crossover point seems to be a good design choice.
These speakers are only available in black. When you remove the protective cover from the enclosure, it unveils the gold woofers in the speaker cabinet, which are aesthetically pleasing without the grille. The all-black enclosure with gold woofers looks chic and modern.
We were impressed with the Klipsch R-28F floor standing speakers’ audio performance. They displayed strong bass response along with depth and clarity that was unmatched by any other speaker we reviewed. The towers also look as great as they sound. Sadly, we no longer review speaker sets, but we do have a guide to the best soundbars instead.
