“Simply a really good home cinema system”

FOR Attractive design; could be used as a stereo pair AGAINST Slight coarseness to treble; bass a little soft

Pocketing change from £1200 for a full 7.1 Atmos speaker package seems almost too good to be true. When you consider that the cost includes a sizeable pair of floorstanders, you can almost write it off as quality sacrificed for quantity, right?

However, throw in the name Jamo, and we’re all ears. It’s still a lot of speaker for the money, but having recently heard what the company can create on a budget – namely its infectiously fun S 805 floorstanders, which cost just £349 – our enthusiasm returns for what we hope will be another outright bargain.

The S 807s form the front left and right channels here, and they're effectively an upgrade on those S 805s that act as this package’s front channels and sandwich the centre speaker. Though at first glance they add just a second 12.5cm woofer below the same 25mm soft dome tweeter, the S 807s offer a neat solution to Atmos integration.

Feet first

Look at the rear and you’ll notice the Jamos are bi-wireable. Slot the feet of a pair of S 8 ATM speakers into the holes on the top of the cabinet, however, and, in a home cinema set-up, that top pair of inputs connect directly to the height channels on your AV receiver, sending the signal through the S 807s and leaving the Atmos speakers clean of any terminals of their own.

Though the traditional practice of wiring up each speaker individually to many might not appear that messy, it’s all in line with Jamo’s intention to mix style with substance and practicality in this Studio 8 range – and that objective is again evident in this package’s centre speaker.

Tapered toward its front end, the S 81 CEN doesn’t sit squarely on a traditional speaker stand, as we would usually set it up. Instead, two small wooden legs grow from beneath each 10cm woofer – again straddling the tweeter – catering for its placement on any rack or cabinet already below your TV or projector screen with some in-built isolation.

That means the only speaker stands necessary are ones to elevate your surround pair of standmounters. As their name suggests, the S 801s are similar in form to their centre-speaker sibling, with one each of the same 10cm woofers, looking like the S 807s but on rather a smaller scale.

All that’s missing then is the subwoofer – and for a sub the S 808 is easier than most to miss. With a 20cm driver powered by a Class D amplifier, it’s a wonder how Jamo has fitted so much rumble into a cabinet so slim. At only 176mm in depth, it sticks out no further into the room than your front channels. The company even suggests storing it under the sofa – you don’t get much tidier than that.

Boundless energy

But if we were developing a soft spot for Jamo following the stereo performance of its S 805 speakers, we’ve grown only fonder having spent a couple of days with this S 807 HCS package.

That same energy is present, bounding through an adrenaline-fuelled flick such as

Mad Max: Fury Road, but with the detail and presence of mind to taper its enthusiasm when rendering the pitch-dark soundtrack to Blade Runner.

Those floorstanders are undeniably the stars. There is a minor coarseness across the board, so you’ll need to give a little care and attention to system matching, but the S 807s stand out with their full body and confident dynamics.

However, that does affect integration a little: the centre and surround speakers, as much as being smaller scale, can’t quite match the expression dealt by their floorstanding family members, so you notice when voices in particular move from one speaker to the next.

A lot of the bass is handled by the S 807s as well, those front-firing reflex ports earning their keep, but the heft of the S 808 sub helps it to delve even deeper. It isn’t perhaps the tautest low end, coming across as marginally soft, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

It’s fair to say Jamo has built a speaker package very much in the image of what we heard from the S 805 stereo pair. It’s a family sound, the kind you’d hope from any range of speakers. It instils trust that what you hear from one you’ll get from the rest, but nonetheless this is a sound that isn’t as common as you might expect.

Smooth edges

The S 807 HCS isn’t just a great speaker package due to its cost, though, nor its size and practicality; it is simply a really good home cinema system. There are improvements that could be made, edges to be smoothed, but we’d be more than happy going to the movies with Jamo any time.

“A full 7.1 Dolby Atmos speaker package at this price seems almost too good to be true”