The Edifier MR5 puts three drivers in each cabinet and a separate amplifier channel behind every one of them. A 5in woofer, a 3.75in mid driver and a 1in silk dome tweeter, tri-amped, split by a three-way active crossover, for £279.99 a pair at the time of writing.

That matters because the cheaper monitor in the same range does the usual thing. The Edifier MR4 is a two-way: one 4in woofer, one 1in silk dome tweeter, 42W, no XLR socket and no Bluetooth. The MR5 roughly triples the power, adds a dedicated midrange driver and its own amp, and puts balanced inputs on the back. The question is whether a third way is worth having on a desk, or whether it is a specification that reads better than it sounds.

We have been running ours in our bedroom DJ setup rather than a mixing room, which is where a lot of these sorts of speakers end up. Edifier supplied our pair free of charge.

These are plain black boxes and they are not pretending otherwise. The cabinets are MDF, which is there to keep resonance down rather than to look like anything, and the only flourish is a dimpled waveguide around the tweeter that Edifier uses to widen the listening area.

The front panel is where the thinking shows. A volume knob and a 3.5mm headphone output sit on the active speaker, so switching to headphones does not mean reaching round the back or digging through an app. Around the rear are two tone knobs, marked High and Low, and the input bank.

Size is the thing to check before you buy. Each cabinet is 159mm wide and 264mm tall, and the active one is 280mm deep. The pair weighs 10.38kg. That depth is the figure that catches people out on a shallow desk, particularly once you have added the clearance a rear port needs.

The full sheet, from Edifier's own listings:

One gap in that box list is worth naming before you order. Edifier gives you a 3.5mm to RCA cable and a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable, and nothing balanced. The XLR and TRS inputs are the reason to buy these over the MR4, and you will be supplying your own cables to use either of them. Budget another £20 or so if you are coming out of a mixer or an interface.

The obvious case is the one on the box: near-field monitoring for producing and mixing. A flat response and a dedicated midrange driver are what you want when you are making decisions about a mix rather than enjoying one, and the rear tone knobs plus the ConneX room compensation exist so you can take some of the room back out of what you are hearing.

The case we have actually put them through is DJing at home. Ours run from turntables through a mixer, and from a DJ controller with a laptop, the former being exactly what the balanced inputs are for. A DJ mixer puts out a hotter, less forgiving signal than a streaming app does, and these have taken it without fuss. If you are building that setup out, our guide to the best DJ headphones for every budget covers the other half of the monitoring job.

Then there is the one that sounds like a compromise and is not. With Bluetooth 6.0 and LDAC on board, the MR5 doubles as the stereo pair in the room, so the same speakers you mix on also handle an evening of listening without you re-patching anything.

Where they are wrong is scale and placement. These are near-field monitors built to sit a metre or so from your head, on a desk or on stands at ear height. They are not a party PA, and standing them on the floor or shoving them into a corner will undo the flat response you paid for. If you want monitoring you can carry between rooms instead, our review of the Audeze MM-520 covers the headphone route.

Setup is a power cable, the cable that links the two cabinets, and whatever input you are using. The active speaker does all the work and the passive one just takes a feed from it.

Day to day, the front panel is what you touch. Volume and a headphone socket are both there, which sounds minor until you own a pair of monitors where they are not. The rear High and Low knobs are the fast fix for a room: 6dB of cut or boost above 10kHz and around 125Hz, set by hand, no app required.

The Edifier ConneX app goes further when you want it to, with room compensation presets for low cut-off, desktop placement and acoustic space. Bluetooth pairing is multipoint, so a phone and a laptop can both stay connected.

Start with the bottom end, because that is where a three-way earns its keep. Bass is clear, with excellent depth and a solid heaviness to it that never strays into muddiness. That distinction matters more here than on a hi-fi speaker: a monitor that flatters the low end will have you mixing bass out of your own tracks to compensate, and these do not.

The midrange is warm and honest, and the detail retrieval through that band is good. Giving the mids their own driver and their own amplifier channel is the whole argument for the MR5 over a two-way, and it is audible rather than theoretical.

Up top the silk dome tweeter does what silk is chosen for. Treble is crisp with lovely clarity, and there is no fatigue over a long session and no sibilance to speak of.

The thing that has surprised us most is headroom. Even at high volumes these do not distort. We have them pointing straight at our face when we are DJing on the home setup, and everything stays tight and controlled. They have replaced our little Pioneer monitors in that setup, which was not the plan when they arrived.

On Bluetooth they are just as good, which is not always true of a monitor with a radio bolted on. Playback is honest, the detailing is rich, and the soundstage and imaging both hold up.

Yes. The Edifier MR5 scores 9/10 and takes a Waveform Wavemaker editorial award. Three-way, tri-amped, honest across the range and unbothered at volume, with balanced inputs for the gear you already own and Bluetooth for the evenings you are not working. At £279.99 the pair, with a dedicated midrange driver and its own amplifier in there, that is a lot of monitor for the money.

They suit anyone mixing or producing near-field at home, and anyone running a DJ setup who has been making do with hi-fi speakers or computer speakers. Factor in balanced cables, because none come in the box, and measure your desk for that 280mm depth before you order.

If the MR5 is more monitor than your desk or your budget wants, the Edifier MR4 is the step down in the same family: two-way, 4in woofer, the same 1in silk dome tweeter, 42W instead of 110W, and no XLR or Bluetooth. Worth knowing that Amazon UK had it listed as unavailable when we checked, so look before you plan around it. Otherwise, grab a pair of the MR5 below.

Edifier supplied the MR5 monitors reviewed here free of charge. Free products are only provided to aid our testing and do not affect our honest opinion.

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