Company & Product Overview

The Audio Advice team was wandering the halls of CES back in 2016 on the lookout for great-sounding audio products we might not be aware of. We glanced in a small room and saw all of these brightly colored speakers and almost kept walking. But those colors drew us in and boy are we glad we went in for a listen. The Kanto speakers we heard were their new YU series which had a very warm and musical sound to our ears, plus the fact they had a built-in phono preamp made our vinyl loving side smile.

David Reid founded Kanto and came to market in 2007 with a pretty cool docking station for the iPod. Growing up, David was always around music as his father was a pretty hardcore audiophile. He experienced what it was like to be on the quest for great sound which led him to become an audio hobbyist and tinkerer as well.

After Kanto won several awards for their dock, David followed his passion for audio and came out with a line of affordable powered speakers. One really smart move on their part was recognizing the market for small, powered speakers span all kinds of customers, so rather than offering only a couple of finishes like most companies, they came out with a huge variety of vibrant colors that could fit into many different environments.

Kanto’s YU2, YU4, and YU6 have been extremely popular at Audio Advice with their multiple input choices and great sound. In mid-2019, Kanto had the idea of taking their very popular YU4 model and offering what we like to call a “Henry Ford” version. They felt not everyone needed all of the inputs and color choices, so why not make something more basic to let music lovers on a tight budget get into really great sound. The Kanto YU is the new model that fulfills their goal and is the subject of today’s review.

Design & Build Quality

Like the YU4, the YU is a compact speaker. It is designed to be an all-in-one speaker where the only thing you’ll need is an audio source to start playing some tunes.

Physically the YU is about 9” tall, 5 ½” wide, and 7 ½’ deep. While not tiny, the YU will easily fit on a bookcase or desktop. Unlike the other Kanto’s, the YU is available in one finish, basic black.

All Kanto speakers are designed in Canada and made in China to pretty exacting standards. Build quality is first-rate and especially good considering their budget price. And with Kanto being a Canadian company, they have not been it with any tariffs, so the YU is a very good value at its price of $249/pr.

Features & Technology

On the front of the YU, you’ll find a round knob that serves as a source selector and volume control. You just click it to flip between Bluetooth and the analog inputs, turn it for volume, or push and hold to power the speaker on/off. In addition to this, the YU comes with a full-function remote control. We really like the fact it has bass, treble, and balance settings on it in addition to what you would normally expect. Kanto even gives you a reset button for each setting to take it back to neutral.

The amplifier and inputs are housed in one speaker that you’ll connect up to the other one using the supplied speaker cable. To meet Kanto’s goal of a budget YU4, they eliminated the digital inputs and phono preamp. You do get an analog input, a subwoofer output, and most importantly for the majority of people, they come with Bluetooth® 4.2 with Qualcomm® aptX™. This is a high-resolution type of Bluetooth that will give you the best sound when streaming from your smartphone.

The speaker components used in the YU are one reason it sounds so good for the money. You’ll get speaker drivers typical of high-performance speakers. The tweeter is a 1” silk dome type and the 4” woofer is made of Kevlar.

To increase efficiency, the YU, like all of the Kanto YU models, has a rear-firing port. This is pretty common on most powered speakers. It does mean that where you place them can impact the sound a bit. We would not recommend putting any rear-ported speaker right against a wall or in a corner as they will get a little boomy. Move them a bit out into the room and you’ll be pleased with the sound.

The YU has an internal amplifier to power the speaker components. This type of design has a huge advantage in that the designer of the amp knows precisely what type of load the amp is going to be seeing. With this knowledge, the amplifier can be made to be a perfect match for the speakers. Every penny spent on the amp design goes into driving the speakers well rather than planning for any type of speaker situation on the market.

To us, it looks like Kanto did a great job of trimming down the YU4 to give people its same great sound with just the loss of the phono and optical inputs (and of course the multitude of color choices too).

Performance

We tried the YU on both some desktop stands and on some speaker stands for a more serious evaluation. For most people, they will probably wind up flat on a tabletop or on the stands. We do recommend (and this holds true for any desktop speaker) that you invest a bit more in a nice pair of desk stands. They will angle the speaker up, but more importantly reduce the interaction of the speaker and your desk, which in our opinion, opens up the midrange. You may wonder why this happens. Flat on a desktop the bass gets a little boomy, which to our ears, muddies up the midrange.

Bluetooth connection was quick and easy for us, so we had music playing in a matter of seconds. If you have been doing the audio hobby as long as we have, you may remember a popular speaker from about 4 decades ago. This little speaker turned the audio world on its ear for how good it sounded for so little money. That speaker was the Radio Shack Minimus 7. It was just such a good value. Sitting and listening to the YU reminded us of that speaker! The YU4, which sounds identical to the YU has always been one of our favorite little powered speakers, but when you get that sound for under $250/pr you are really getting something special.

The silk dome tweeter Kanto uses is just that, silky smooth. For its small cabinet size, the YU also produces pretty decent bass, although it is by no means the amount of bass energy you will get out of a larger cabinet with a bigger woofer. If you push the YU hard, the bass does get a little boomy compared to bigger speakers, but every speaker of this size we have heard does this.

What the YU does very well is present a big soundstage that allows you to separate out all the individual instruments and performers. They do this especially well on floor stands. Another thing that struck us is how pleasant they are to listen to at low volume levels. For a lot of people, we see them being used this way for background music while working at your desk. The sound is very smooth and sweet so you’ll be able to play them for hours without getting any fatigue.

If you do get a recording with accented bass that may be too much or one lacking in bass, this is where the tone controls on the remote will come in really handy. The fact you can fine-tune the YU to your music and/or room is pretty amazing in the price range.

It sounds to us that Kanto made the decision to go for a pure, smooth sound, rather than create something capable of filling a big room with loud sound that might not be as pure. Within their limits, these are great-sounding little speakers.

Overall Recommendation

It is hard to find a decent bookshelf speaker these days for under $250/pr, much less one that has amplifiers built-in. Don’t get us wrong, the YU is not the end-all to speakers, but for the money, it is one heck of a performer. If you are just starting to put together your first audio system and are on a budget, these must be on your list. Or if you want to improve your computer sound, they will be great there as well. Also, if you need a phono preamp and/or optical inputs, the YU4 will give you these options for a few more dollars.