3 of the 10 subwoofers whose manufacturer publishes a US list price fall in this band. Every figure below is the manufacturer’s own, linked to the page it came from.
Last verified: 2026-08-09
What “under” means here
A price band has to be drawn somewhere, so we draw it on manufacturer list price and say where. This page is everything below $700. List price is not street price. These models discount, some of them heavily, and a model at the top of one band is often bought for less than one at the bottom of the next. We do not publish retailer prices, because a price we cannot keep current is worse than no price at all. Use the band to narrow the field, then check what it actually costs today.
We hold 11 subwoofers in the database. 10 of them have a list price published by the manufacturer; the other 1 do not, and are named at the foot of this page rather than guessed into a band.
How big these actually are
Every cabinet is drawn to the same scale from the dimensions its manufacturer publishes, front elevation, standing on a common floor line. The 300 mm bar underneath is the reference.
We draw these rather than reproduce product photographs, because the photographs belong to the manufacturers and we have no licence to republish them. The outline is the cabinet and nothing more: the circle is schematic and no port is drawn, because none of these manufacturers publishes where either sits on the baffle. The one thing the drawing does tell you is the thing a press shot never does, which is whether it fits.
The 3 in this band
A subwoofer publishes a different set of figures from anything else on this site. It carries its own amplifier, so there is no sensitivity figure to convert to a common basis and no impedance for your receiver to drive. What it publishes instead is amplifier power, driver diameter, the cabinet the driver is loaded in, a frequency response that means nothing without its tolerance, and outside dimensions. Those are the lines below. Where a manufacturer quotes the response once per cabinet mode, we say so and we say which figure we used.
product listing
Polk Audio Monitor XT10
- List price
- $349 (each)
- Amplifier power
- 50 W RMS, 100 W peak (Class D)
- Driver
- 10 in nominal
- Cabinet
- ported
- Frequency response
- 24 Hz – 160 Hz, no tolerance stated
- Maximum output
- not published
- Cabinet dimensions
- 400 × 302 × 421 mm (H × W × D)
What the published figures favour
- Cabinet dimensions published: 400 × 302 × 421 mm (H × W × D), about 51 litres of external volume, so you can check it fits before ordering.
What to check before buying
- Amplifier published at 50 W RMS against a median of 550 W across the 11 subwoofers in our database, so it has less continuous power than most of them.
- 10-inch driver against a 12-inch median for this category — roughly 31 per cent less radiating area, on the nominal diameters the manufacturers publish, which take in the surround rather than the moving cone alone.
- Polk publishes 24 Hz to 160 Hz with no tolerance stated. Without a ±dB window the range does not tell you how far the response deviates inside it, and it cannot be compared with the ±3 dB figures the rest of this category publishes.
- No maximum output figure published. 1 of the 11 subwoofers in our database publishes one, so the omission is this manufacturer’s choice rather than an industry-wide silence, and amplifier watts are all you have to go on here.
- Its published figures are identical to the 12-inch Monitor XT12: the same 50 W RMS, the same 100 W peak and the same 24 Hz – 160 Hz. Polk Audio publishes nothing that separates the 10-inch driver from the 12-inch, so the specification cannot tell you what the difference in cone area buys.
Polk Audio Monitor XT12
- List price
- $399 (each)
- Amplifier power
- 50 W RMS, 100 W peak (Class AB)
- Driver
- 12 in nominal
- Cabinet
- ported
- Frequency response
- 24 Hz – 160 Hz, no tolerance stated
- Maximum output
- not published
- Cabinet dimensions
- 417 × 406 × 455 mm (H × W × D)
What the published figures favour
- Cabinet dimensions published: 417 × 406 × 455 mm (H × W × D), about 77 litres of external volume, so you can check it fits before ordering.
What to check before buying
- Amplifier published at 50 W RMS against a median of 550 W across the 11 subwoofers in our database, so it has less continuous power than most of them.
- Polk publishes 24 Hz to 160 Hz with no tolerance stated. Without a ±dB window the range does not tell you how far the response deviates inside it, and it cannot be compared with the ±3 dB figures the rest of this category publishes.
- No maximum output figure published. 1 of the 11 subwoofers in our database publishes one, so the omission is this manufacturer’s choice rather than an industry-wide silence, and amplifier watts are all you have to go on here.
- Its published figures are identical to the 10-inch Monitor XT10: the same 50 W RMS, the same 100 W peak and the same 24 Hz – 160 Hz. Polk Audio publishes nothing that separates the 12-inch driver from the 10-inch, so the specification cannot tell you what the difference in cone area buys.
product listing
SVS SB-1000 Pro
- List price
- $600 (each)
- Amplifier power
- 325 W RMS, 820 W peak (Class D)
- Driver
- 12 in nominal
- Cabinet
- sealed
- Frequency response
- 20 Hz – 270 Hz ±3 dB
- Maximum output
- not published
- Cabinet dimensions
- 343 × 330 × 375 mm (H × W × D)
What the published figures favour
- It is 54 per cent smaller by external volume than the SVS PB-1000 Pro, the same 12-inch driver and the same 325 W amplifier in a ported cabinet — 42 litres against 93, computed from the two published sets of outside dimensions. That is the figure that has to fit in the room.
- Frequency response published with its tolerance: 20 Hz – 270 Hz ±3 dB. A range quoted without a ±dB window does not tell you how flat it is inside it; this one carries the window.
- Cabinet dimensions published: 343 × 330 × 375 mm (H × W × D), about 42 litres of external volume, so you can check it fits before ordering.
What to check before buying
- Amplifier published at 325 W RMS against a median of 550 W across the 11 subwoofers in our database, so it has less continuous power than most of them.
- Sealed cabinet, published 3 Hz higher at the bottom than the SVS PB-1000 Pro, the same 12-inch driver and the same 325 W amplifier in a ported cabinet: 20 Hz against 17 Hz.
- Published down to 20 Hz at ±3 dB, against a median of 18 Hz among the 9 models in our database quoted to that same window.
- No maximum output figure published. 1 of the 11 subwoofers in our database publishes one, so the omission is this manufacturer’s choice rather than an industry-wide silence, and amplifier watts are all you have to go on here.
At a glance
| Model | List price | Amplifier, RMS | Driver | Cabinet | Frequency response | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polk Audio Monitor XT10 | $349 | 50 W | 10 in | ported | 24 Hz – 160 Hz, no tolerance stated | source |
| Polk Audio Monitor XT12 | $399 | 50 W | 12 in | ported | 24 Hz – 160 Hz, no tolerance stated | source |
| SVS SB-1000 Pro | $600 | 325 W | 12 in | sealed | 20 Hz – 270 Hz ±3 dB | source |
What this page could not include
These subwoofers are in our database, but their manufacturers do not publish a US list price, so there is no honest way to say which band they belong in:
- Klipsch R-120SW — no list price on the manufacturer’s US page
We will not take a price from a retailer listing to fill that gap. Retailer prices move, and a band built on one would be wrong within the month.
Related
- Subwoofers From $700 to $1,200 — the same category, middle band
- Subwoofers Over $1,200 — the same category, higher band
- The gear database — every figure used here, with its source
- How we work — the method, and where it breaks