Oakcastle BK100 Active Bookshelf Speakers review: Powerful speakers that pack a punch
Despite their name, the Oakcastle BK100 Active Bookshelf Speakers are equally at home perched on your TV stand as they are on a bookshelf. And while you shouldn’t expect them to blast your windows out, with 60W of power, they’re more than capable of filling a mid-sized room.
They’re also satisfyingly stylish, in an understated, non-RGB-assisted way. They lack cover grilles and while I’d yank them off anyway, be warned that there’s nothing to block questing fingers. If you’ve ever been to a second-hand shop and walked past row upon row of squished speaker cones, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Hook the Oakcastle BK100 Active Bookshelf Speakers up and the fun starts. Despite their £69.99 price tag, the BK100s aren’t short on connectivity options: HDMI ARC, optical, AUX in, Bluetooth and USB are all supported. I’m happy to report that while not all USB-equipped speakers and soundbars support playing from USB, the BK100s will happily belt out your MP3s.
The controls are located in a nook on the side of the right speaker rather than being in your face, echoing the understated vibe the BK100s are going for. You can tweak the bass and treble to your heart’s content, but there are no specific modes (e.g. movie or music). That’s not unreasonable given cost of the speakers, and their default settings always felt spot on for me. But if you love to tweak (and save) your audio settings, juggling multiple EQ presets, that could be an issue.
So how do the Oakcastle BK100 Active Bookshelf Speakers actually perform? Extremely well, as it happens. True, there’s no subwoofer, but with four drivers between them, the BK100s belt out the bass, with zero muddiness at higher levels, bottoming out at around 30Hz.
Even when I wasn’t shooting Starfield’s Eclipse Mercenaries in the face, the quality of the BK100s was right up there, serving up clear, detailed sounds across virtually the whole range. They made the most of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33‘s gorgeous soundtrack, and, revisiting Captured (perhaps unwisely), its subtle background pulse was present just enough to keep me unsettled.
They don’t pretend to be surround sound, but the BK100s’ speaker separation is spot on, not least because they’re separate speakers, not a soundbar, with two drivers in each. They’re also excellent for movies and music; I’d go so far to say that they handle heavier songs a hair better than the Majority Bowfell Halo Atmos, which I reviewed recently.
Unfortunately, Majority, which also makes the Oakcastle BK100s, could have given the remote control a little more attention. At the risk of sounding lazy, I was surprised to find that you can only alter the bass and treble on the speakers. There’s no bass/treble button on the remote, as you can see below.
On top of that, the remote has a disappointingly narrow reception area so, at least with the unit I received, if the remote’s not directly in front of the right speaker, or a few angles either side, it simply won’t be picked up. Given the overall performance of the Oakcastle BK100 Active Bookshelf Speakers, it’s a disappointing flaw. I also wouldn’t have said no to a passthrough headphone socket.
Despite the issues with its remote, the Oakcastle BK100s are well worth considering if you’re looking to trade up from your TV’s anaemic speakers. At a hair under £70 from Amazon, they punch well above their price tag and as long as you’re not looking to reach every corner of some sprawling venue, you’ll be more than satisfied with their performance.
Thanks to Majority for providing a unit for the purposes of this review.
