Dali Oberon 5

Superb floorstanders, right up there with the best

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₹1,25,000

If you're looking for the best floorstanders below ₹2L, you now have plenty of choice. New contenders such as the Q Acoustics 5040 and Fyne Audio F501E have sparked the sector to life, as has the price reduction of Wharfedale's excellent Evo 4.4.

Yet, though they might be getting a touch long in the tooth, Dali's Oberon 5 remain one of the front runners at this level.

There are no magic ingredients here, there's no cutting-edge technology to explain the Oberon 5's unusually talented nature. Just careful engineering and steady refinements of design ideas that the Danish brand has pursued across its speaker ranges for years, but in this case honed to get the best performance at the price.

Compact, not dominating

The Oberon 5 are compact two-way towers, standing just 83cm high and just over 16cm wide. The dimensions mean they will look right at home in most rooms, never dominating visually in the way the larger Q Acoustics 3040 speakers can. The MDF cabinet is nicely made and there are four finish options: black ash, white, dark walnut or light oak.

There are a pair of 13cm mid/bass drivers and a larger-than-usual 29mm soft-dome tweeter. The mid/bass drivers use the company's favoured wood fibre/fine-grain paper pulp cone, which is claimed to deliver the drive-unit Holy Grail of high rigidity with low resonance. Here, though, the engineers have worked hard on the motor system and suspension set-up to optimise detail, transparency and dynamics.