The Best Budget Studio Monitors, RANKED [All Models Compared, 2025] — SonicScoop

This article on the best budget studio monitors is also available as a video and podcast episode.

Introduction: What Makes for a Good Pair Budget Studio Monitors

Your studio monitors are the final lens through which you experience all your music. And just like a lens, they can color your sound, for better or for worse.

There are a lot of ways to go wrong here, and one of the most common pitfalls in monitor selection is failing to recognize that your mixes will tend to sound a lot like the inverse of your speakers.

For example: Bright monitors tend to yield dark sounding mixes, bassy monitors tend to yield thin sounding mixes, and “impressive” sounding monitors will often leave you with mixes that sound dull, flat, lifeless and veiled.

This means that you don’t necessarily want to buy a set of monitors just because you like the sound of them! You want to choose monitors that will give you the best results.

So which ones to choose?

I’m here to help. In case you don’t know me, I’m Justin Colletti, and I’m a platinum mastering engineer who just happens to have heard just about every major pair of studio monitors and headphones on the pro market today! And I’ll give you some of my recommendations and tasting notes to help you find the monitors that will best suit your needs.

We’ll focus in today on the best studio monitors on a budget, looking mostly at 5″ models for $500 and under. Many of the monitors here may be available in larger and smaller sizes, but for the sake of continuity, we’ll be comparing the same sized drivers as much as possible.

I’ve broken them up into 5 categories:

The Categories

1. The A Tier: Best All Around — These are my top picks in this price point, that are the most likely to serve the largest number of users the best. Top picks are the Kali Audio LP-6 and ADAM Audio T5V. If you’re uncertain of what to get and want the short and concise answer, this is it.

2. The B Tier: Super Budget Beasts — These monitors are surprisingly good if you have a little less to spend. The PreSonus Eris monitors and JBL 305P MK II are my top picks here.

3. The C Tier: The Hype Machines —These aren’t monitors that are too skewed to lead you toward great sounding mixes unless you learn them very well, but they can be exciting and fun to listen to, so there are many producers who have a soft spot in their hear for them. I couldn’t write this list without including the incredibly popular Yamaha HS5 and KRK Rockit G5.

4. Desktop Monitors — It’s amazing how much better Desktop monitors have gotten in recent years. Our top picks are from ADAM, Kali and IK Multimedia. These small speakers can go surprisinly deep, and often outperform larger budget monitors.

5. Cube Monitors — Cube monitors are single driver speakers that focus in on the midrange. They are usually NOT full bandwidth, but this is a feature, not a bug. Best options here are the Auratones, Avantones and Reftones..

Kali Audio LP6 (Winner: Best All Around, $500/pair)

 

 

The Kali Audio LP6 are by no means the most exciting monitors on this list. But they are hands down among the most useful.

These are NOT speakers that are voiced to “impress”. Instead, they are speakers that are voiced to be as neutral and flat as possible, encouraging you to make your mixes sound more impressive.

The beauty of the LP6 is in the fact that they do so little of the work of making your mix sound good for you. They won’t fool you or lull you into a false sense of security. They won’t misguide you into mixes that are overly bright, or dark, or boomy or tinny. The frequency response here is right in the Goldilocks zone: “Just Right”.

Because these speakers are so uncolored, unbiased, unexciting, and arguably, “uninteresting” in and of themselves, they encourage you to make your mixes sound more exciting and intresting.

This is not to say that the Kali LP6 don’t sound good. They do! They just don’t go out of their way to be unrealistically flattering, or to be biased in favor of the kinds of “hype” that wins quick sip tests, but leads to lousy, flat, lifeless mixes.

In this price range, if you want to do good work that stands up across a wide variety of systems, the Kali LP6 are the monitors to beat.

ADAM Audio T5V (Runner Up: Best All Around, $480/pair)

 

ADAM Audio is easily one of my favorite speakers brands at every price point where they make speakers.

If the Kali LP6 weren’t around, the ADAM Audio T Series would be an easy shoe-in for the THE best monitors in the entry level bracket.

I’ve given the T5V the runner up slot instead of the top slot in this category only because the Kali LP6 are slightly more neutral, and could be an ideal choice for a potentially larger number of listeners.

BUT, monitor preferences are very personal, and there are certainly some users who will prefer both the sound and the results of the ADAM T Series.

Relative to neutral, the T5V has a slight softening in the upper mids with a slight lift in the higher highs. This makes them sound clear and detailed and present without being harsh or fatiguing.

They may encourage you to push a little more in the upper mids in your mix, and to make sure you don’t go overboard with the highest frequencies. These are two common problem areas for mixers, who often leave their mixes a little dull in the upper mids over long listening sessions, and sometimes boost too much in the high highs, letting sibilance, cymbal wash and reverb splashiness detract from their mixes.

The T Series is voiced to combat these two issues, and of all of the personalized voicings you’ll find on this list, are among the most likely to help steer your mix away from common mistakes and shortcomings in tonal balance.

PreSonus Eris Studio 5 (Winner: Best Super Budget, $340/pair)

 

The PreSonus Eris are a bit less well known among pros than the Kalis and ADAMs, but they are surprisingly good for speakers of this price.

If you want to save a bit of money, these speakers are quite likely to help lead you in the right direction.

Relative to neutral, these speakers have a little bit of extra warmth and girth in the lower mids, without unduly sacrificing detail or clarity.

Of all the tilts a set of speakers could have, this is one of the better ways to skew from flat, because one of the most common problems in beginner and intermediate mixes is excessive murky build up in the low mids. These speakers will encourage you to make additional cuts in that area.

If budget is a major factor, then these speakers, and their even smaller siblings in the same series, could be a great way to go. The only issues is that new advances in micro desktop style speakers from the likes of ADAM may now be a viable and better performing alternatives to some of the smallest Eris speakers at around the same price.

JBL 305P Mk2 (Runner Up: Best Super Budget, $300/pair)

 

A $300 pair of full-sized 5″ speakers have no business being as good as the JBL 305P Mk2.

Because they have slightly more of a “scooped” sonic profile than the PreSonus Eris, a little less in the way of mids, and a little more in the way of a flattering “smile” like curve, I believe the Eris could suit a wider variety of users than the JBLs.

But with that said, some users will prefer the JBLs and get better results with them. If your primary danger is overscooping, but you don’t want speakers that are overly “hyped” like those in our next category, the 305P could be a great way to go.

KRK Rokit 5 G5 (Winner: Best Hype Machine)

The Rokit series from KRK are the original “Hype Machines”. These speakers are notorious for looking and sounding FUN. They amp up the lows, they amp up the highs, and people who love them often really love them.

Whether their inherent “hype” is a pro or a con is up to your and how your mixes turn out on them. But I will say that the Rokit monitors have been getting more neutral and more useful over the years, with the G5 being their flattest—and most flexible—monitors yet.

For those who want absurd amounts of hype, the Rokit “Classic” have the original super “scooped” sound of the originals. This is the smiley curve to end all smiley curves.

But if you want speakers that retain some “fun” while still being reasonably useful, the Rokit G5 are probably the most useful “hyphy” sounding speakers out there. They have just enough fun factor to be inspiring, and just enough neutrality not to lead you too far off course.

Yamaha H5S (Runner Up: Best Hype Machine)

Ah, the H5S. I rarely am so bold in these pages, but I’m not going to lie, and I’m not going to sugar coat it: I DO NOT LIKE THESE SPEAKERS.

More importantly, I generally do not like mixes that come from these speakers.

I have heard enough songs mixed on these incredibly popular speakers from my mastering and mix coaching clients that I can often identify them without even asking: “You mixed these on H5S, didn’t you?”

Mixes that come from the H5S tend to sound the opposite of the way the H5S do. The mixes sound mushy, dull and indistinct.

This is because the H5S are some of the most present speakers on the market in the upper midrange. They are tight, bright, present and assertive sounding speakers. And therefore, the mixes that come out of them tend to sound anything but.

The steroetypical HS5 mix sounds boomy on bottom, boxy in the middle and flacid and unclear on top.

Don’t get me wrong: You CAN learn to mix very well on these speakers, and some people have. But all the detail you experience when listening to them comes at the cost of actual detail in the mix.

I think the reason these monitors are so popular is because they look a lot like the famous Yamaha NS10 speakers that were found in so many recording studios for so long, and people imagine they were designed to mimic them. But nothing coudl be further from the truth.

Where the NS10 speakers put a great focus on the center mids, encouraging mixers to make cuts there, and sacrificed low end extension in favor of resonance free lows and mids from their non-ported design, the HS5 put the emphasis squarely on the upper mids instead, while giving them extra hype in the lows and a soft high top end.

This gives them grating and fatiguing detail while listening that yields mixes that are devoid of excitement, clarity, detail and energy in the upper midrange. And to make matters worse, the relative hotness in the upper mids and lack of energy in the higher highs often lead producers toward mixes that are overly bright and sizzly in the high highs while they are overly dull in the upper mids, and don’t have much low end extension. This is a losing combination.

(Did I mention that I don’t like these speakers, or mixes that come from them?)

But with all that said, these are just my tastes, and my observations of what has and haven’t worked for the majority of my mastering and coaching clients. There is certainly some minority of mixers who would do better work on these than any of the other speakers here due to their unique preferences and biases. But I believe the number of producers these would be ideally suited for is far lower than you’d guess by their share of the market.

ADAM Audio D3V (Winner: Best Desktop Monitors, $350. Runners up: iLoud Micro and Kali LP UNF)

I just recently received the ADAM Adudio D3V monitors, and I am absolutely shocked by how good they sound for their size.

Comparing them directly to 5″ monitors costing twice as much, my immediate reaction was “Holy Moley”, which I said out loud, quite unwillingly.

I have no idea how conventional speakers of this size will compete with newer more ingenious designs like the D3V, the IK Multimedia iLoud Micro and the Kali UNF monitors.

I’d like to do an entire post comparing these, but for now, know that on balance between price, size and performance in this class, the full-bodied ADAM D3V are my favorite, edging out the slightly tighter, more scooped and more expensive iLoud Micro and the slightly larger and deeper Kali LP UNF.

If your mixes err on the side of being boxy and thick in the mids, the fatter, smoother sound of the D3V will be welcome, while if your mixes err on the side of being overhyped and over-scooped, the iLoud micros could be the better bet. If you have a little more room, the Kali LP UNF do a very good job at relatively resonance free low frequency extension at the cost of a somewhat larger footprint.

Avantone MixCubes (Winner: Best Budget Cube Monitors, $500. Runners up: Auratones  and Reftones are recommended at a higher price point.)

 

Ironically, the simplest speakers on this list are the most expensive. The classic Cube-Style monitors.

What these monitors lack in full extension to the lowest and highest reaches of the frequency spectrum, they make up for with very neutral and resonance-free performance where it matters most: in the all important midrange. Get this right, and you get the record right!

They also have the benefit of taking the room out of the equation to a greater degree than more full-bandwidth speakers—a welcome advantage in relatively untreated spaces and in travel situations.

The Avantone MixCubes aren’t my favorite of the three options, but they are quite good, and once you consider the price of an amp, they are the only ones that meet our price target.

The reissued Auratone Super Sound Cubes are the most like the originals, with the most limited bandwidth and very flat and neutral response within it. These are my personal favorites.

The Auratones offer slightly greater bandwidth, and s lightly more scooped character, where the Reftones open up the frequency response further still, offering more meaningful low and high frequency reproduction without sacrificing what makes single driver closed box speakers worthwhile.

Summing it Up

We’re in a bit of a golden age of speakers now, and the options available for just a few hundred dollars today blow away most of the speakers for double or triple the inflation-adjusted price that we had access to throughout the 20th century.

Any of the speakers here could serve you well. But you’ll never get the most out of them unless you properly treat your room!

We have plenty of articles and videos on that. But until you do, another great option is headphone mixing.

In recent roundups, we’ve covered the best open back headphones for mixing and mastering at any price, and the best headphones for mixing under $400.

I hope you’ve found this roundup and buyer’s guide useful, and I hope to see you in the next one!

Justin Colletti is a platinum certified mastering engineer, a mix coach and author of the Breakthroughs series of mixing courses. He runs SonicScoop.

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