A short time after purchasing a pair of Yamaha NS-A1738s and a Yamaha RX-V573 AV receiver, I decided to pick up a reasonably priced pair of bookshelf speakers to serve in the capacity of surround/rear speakers (to more or less complete my surround sound set-up with the addition of a subwoofer). In the end, a Best Buy Black Friday sale, in addition to a few rebate gift cards, resulted in the fairly cheap purchase of a pair of Insignia 5 ¼” 2-way bookshelf speakers (Model #NS-SP213).
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- NS-SP213 Speakers #1
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- NS-SP213 Speakers #2
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- NS-SP213 Speakers #3
These Insignia speakers feature a 2-way speaker system. Each 2-way speaker has two drivers: one 3/4” tweeter for high frequencies and one 5 1/4” woofer for low frequencies. Additionally, each speaker has a crossover network which feeds two distinct signals, a high frequency signal for the tweeter and a low frequency signal for the woofer. These speakers feature an 80 Hz – 20 kHz frequency response which allows for both clear audio and quality reproduction of high frequencies, albeit at the expense of very low frequencies, less than 80 Hz in this instance, which are often obtained with subwoofers. In regards to powering these speakers, each speaker has peak power handling of 80W.
Concerning the physical speaker(s), which weigh 5.9 lbs apiece, each speaker is 10 9/10” tall, 6 3/8” wide, and 6 3/4” deep. Each speaker has integrated binding posts for either direct connection with the speaker wire or connection through the use of banana plugs. The speakers also have pre-fabricated backing for wall mounting.
To date, these speakers have functioned extraordinarily well for surround/rear speakers. I have my system set to 7 channel audio when listening to the radio and the sound is just as clear and high quality as the audio produced by my Yamaha NS-A1738 (floorstanding) 4-way speaker system, albeit without the very low frequencies, especially those low frequencies easily handled by my subwoofer. Furthermore, when using Surround Decode with computer games and movies, these Insignia speakers are quite audible and fill in those background noises such as footsteps, shouts/talking, gunfire, etc. flawlessly, proving that cheap doesn’t always mean less quality and/or functionality.
