Phoenix Gold XS165

Price Paid:  $80.00

Year / Model Reviewed:
 2000 XS 6.5" Components

Strengths:
Well defined sound, with good frequency response. Bass is not boomy (perfect if you have good rear deck speakers or subs)but present. I love the tweeters, although maybe 1" versions might have been even better.

Weaknesses:
90db of sensitivity is decent, but my rear deck speakers blow it out so I have fader set to +2 front. 70-watt RMS handling is fine for me, but some may not find it high enough.

Summary:
I find the sound quality to be of a very high standard, although it took approximately 10 hours of listening before they were really broken in. The silk-dome tweeters are clear, but not harsh at all (which is perfect for a lot of the music I listen to) and are loud enough so that I have my EQ set to -1db on the treble range. One thing I have noticed however, is that the mid-bass driver doesn't produce the midrange as clearly as I would like to... however, this seems to be a problem with the amp I am running off of as my last set of speakers seemed to do this as well. They only seem to sound better with time though, so I feel that for $80, this was an excellent buy. These speakers were installed into a 1999 Accord v6 EX, so they were installed right into the door panel and tweeter-space in the dash where stock speakers were.

Similar Products Used:
Older Infinity Reference components, stock Honda components

Price Paid:  $139.00 from sounddomain.com

Strengths:
Sound Quality, Imaging, tweets shut off if overpowered/overheated (safety)

Weaknesses:
3/4" tweets aren't loud enough for me

Summary:
These have great sound quality, and they get somewhat loud for 70watts of handling (I am powering them with Infinity 102a 100x2 at 12v). I like the Infinity reference component tweets better because they are 1" and go louder (some of you may not like ear hurting highs but i do)

Similar Products Used:
Infinity Reference COmponents