WHARFEDALE EVO 5.4 > BEST IN CLASS AWARD, AV FORUMS

What Is the Wharfedale EVO 5.4?
The Wharfedale EVO 5.4 is a 3.5 way floorstanding speaker and the flagship of the EVO 5 range of speakers. Right from the off, this is a little different to our other recent Wharfedale reviews because the word ‘retro’ will appear here and only here to say that the EVO 5.4 isn’t. This isn’t a reborn device from decades ago but is instead a bang up to date modern speaker.
It's also quite a lot of speaker. We’ll cover this in rather greater detail in the section to come but the EVO 5.4 has a surprising number of drivers and two of them would be unusual to encounter singly at this price, let alone on the same speaker. On the face of it, this feels like a lot of transducer for the asking price. At a point where some of the speakers we’ve looked at around this price have been fairly compact, the Wharefdale is a jumbo helping.

Performance

I will make no secret of the fact that I generally prefer standmount speakers at any given price point up to (and indeed these days a little beyond) ten grand. I don’t really want more bass if the opening gambit is that bass has limitations to the control and definition that make things sound leaden and confused. With this being said though, there is a 20 minute period after you plug a speaker the size of the 5.4 in where you do appreciate that a bit of scale can rather help things along.
Before we unpick scale though, let me make it clear that the EVO 5.4 has superb bass. The 42Hz lower roll off at +/-3dB was bettered in this space thanks to a spot of benign room reinforcement and the reality of using the Wharfedale in a space like this is that I had meaningful and usable output down to 30Hz. When you play Song of the Stars on the EVO 5.4, you feel that opening note as well as hear it. Is there the absolute transparency and precision that accompanies the Kudos Titan 505 doing the same thing in this space? No… but the £8,300 odd change would probably win quite a few people over. When I tested the EVO 4.2, I felt that there was no shortage of bass but it was handled with a lack of finesse. The 5.4 by contrast hits hard but does so with an agility that is notable for an affordable floorstander.

Conclusion - Wharfedale EVO 5.4 Floorstanding Speaker Review

Crucially though, those rivals might deliver a smidge more joy but, even well finished, keenly priced rivals from Focal and Acoustic Energy wilt against the sheer technical excellence that the EVO 5.4 has baked in to most parts of its specification. In any way you choose to measure its worth, the Wharfedale is a tremendous amount of speaker for the money, combining spec, build, looks and performance in a way that feels like a line in the sand for other affordable brands to match. This is a frankly ridiculous amount of speaker for the money and it would be churlish to describe it as anything other than the current Best in Class.

Scores
Build quality > 9
Connectivity > 9
Sound quality > 10
Ease of use > 9
Features > 10
Value for money > 10
Verdict > 10

Wharfedale EVO 5.4
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