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Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 speakers pair better with AV receivers, start at $600

Founder Andrew Jones says the bookshelf, center and floor-standing speakers have been redesigned from the ground up for improved sound.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Ty Pendlebury
2 min read
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Elac

When speaker designer Andrew Jones left Pioneer for Elac America five years ago, he came up with some great designs straight out of the gate. The Elac Debut and Uni-Fi are two of my favorite speakers for the money over the past 10 years.

Yesterday I spoke to Jones about his latest efforts. He said that when he released the Debut 2.0 in 2018, he also started fielding questions about when the successor to the higher-end Uni-Fi model would be available. Now it's finally here, in three new models: the UB5.2 bookshelf, the UF5.2 floorstander and the UC5.2 center channel.

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Elac

Like the Debut 2.0 before it, the Uni-Fi 2.0 has been fully redesigned, Jones says, and it uses the slim version of the Uni-Fi speaker as its starting point. The three-way configuration is the same -- a concentric tweeter-midrange and a bass woofer -- but that's where the similarities end. Gone are the metallic green drivers, replaced with a more subtle gun-metal. The port is now front-facing, which may help with positioning the speakers near walls. 

The main improvements, according to Jones, have been in reducing distortion with the help of redesigned components. The speaker now features a new 4-inch midrange with a larger voice coil and a 1-inch wide-surround tweeter at its center. The bass woofer at the bottom features a "dished" design for "a smoother response and greater transparency," he said.

The three-way Crossover is also brand-new and Jones told me the 1.5-pound component is so large it needs to be glued in by the cabinet maker. It's designed to improve driver integration and deliver a true 6-ohm nominal impedance for "compatibility with virtually all AV receivers ". Jones gently admonished me for testing the original, harder-to-drive Uni-Fi with a Sony STR-DN1080  (a Rotel was also used), but the new speaker should be an easier load for price-compatible equipment.

Pricing is equivalent to the previous Uni-Fis as well as Elac's new Debut Reference, though I'm anticipating the Uni-Fis will offer more midrange insight and "air" than the Debuts. I look forward to testing them at the earliest opportunity.

The Elac Uni-Fi 2.0 range is available now:

  • UB5.2: Three-way concentric bookshelf speakers: $600/£549 for a pair. (Australian prices aren't yet available but this converts to AU$820.)
  • UC5.2: Three-way concentric center speaker: $400/£299 each.
  • UF5.2: Three-way concentric floor-standing speakers: $1,200/£1,099 for a pair.