The Rogersound Labs Speedwoofer 10S offers practically everything one could want in a midpriced subwoofer. For its size and price, it provides plenty of output for action movies and bassy hip-hop and EDM recordings, and our testing panel found that its clarity and precision matched or exceeded that of many more expensive subwoofers we tried. It incorporates a 10-inch woofer in a ported enclosure, driven by a 350-watt internal amplifier, and it measures a relatively compact 16 by 15 by 16¾ inches (HWD). The subwoofer has a built-in wireless receiver, so you can pair it with Rogersound’s inexpensive wireless transmitter for even easier setup and positioning of the subwoofer.

The Speedwoofer 10S is one of the relatively rare subwoofers that sound equally great with music and movies. It’s punchy and precise enough to reproduce the chest-thumping, upper-bass snap of kick drum and thumb-slapped electric bass, yet it also maintains its composure (and shakes the couch) when asked to reproduce ultra-deep bass tones such as the submarine engine and depth-charge sound effects in U-571. In our listening tests, the panelists praised it for its ability to blend with the other speakers, with Lauren noting that “it sounds like an extension of the rest of the system” and Ron commenting that “it has a clean transition from the upper-bass notes down to the low pipe organ tones.” Ultimately, Lauren placed the Speedwoofer 10S in a tie with the Klipsch SPL-120 for first place, but she immediately named the Speedwoofer 10S as her number one choice when she heard the prices. Ron picked it as his second-favorite; Dan ranked it in the middle of the pack.

When it came to measured performance, the Speedwoofer 10S did just what we hoped an upscale subwoofer would do—it clearly outperformed less costly models such as the Dayton Audio SUB-1200, our favorite budget subwoofer. The Speedwoofer 10S puts out about the same amount of midbass as the SUB-1200, but when you get into the really low, couch-shaking deep-bass frequencies, the Speedwoofer 10S practically tosses the SUB-1200 out of the room, delivering a whopping 10 dB more output (which is double the perceived volume) at 20 Hz. To put it more simply, the Speedwoofer 10S is just a lot more fun to listen to. The Speedwoofer 10S’s measured output averaged 115.5 dB in the midbass and 107.5 dB in the low bass.

While the Speedwoofer 10S follows the “plain black box” visual aesthetic common to subwoofers, at least it’s an attractively finished and reasonably compact plain black box.

The Speedwoofer 10S offers line-level RCA stereo inputs and outputs, which make it compatible with receivers that have a line-level subwoofer output (included on all surround-sound AV receivers and some stereo receivers) as well as with stereo systems having a separate amp and preamp. It also has a built-in wireless receiver, so you can connect the optional wireless transmitter to the receiver’s subwoofer output and avoid running a long cable to the sub. If your audio gear lacks a subwoofer output, the Speedwoofer 10S also has speaker-level input connections, so you can connect the subwoofer to your speakers or amplifier and use the subwoofer’s crossover frequency control to blend it with the speakers.

Here I have to add a disclosure: When I was working as a consultant prior to my employment at Wirecutter, Rogersound Labs paid me to measure the CEA-2010 output of some prototype subs it was developing at the time. I also gave Rogersound my CEA-2010 measurement results for the Speedwoofer 10S at no charge (which the company then published on its website). Now that I’ve joined Wirecutter’s staff, I no longer do consulting work, but to avoid any potential conflict of interest, we relied on the opinions of our other three listeners and on the objectivity of the CEA-2010 measurements when making our picks for this guide. Reviews of the Speedwoofer 10S in many audio publications, including Audioholics, Home Theater Review, and Sound & Vision, corroborate our judgment.