What the maker puts in writing
All five bullets, in full:
- “Yamaha NS-C210 2-Way Bass-Reflex Center Speaker - 4m (13 ft) Speaker Cable - Yamaha Warranty”
- “Designed to reproduce the full, dynamic sound of HD sources”
- “Woofers use light aluminum cones for extra-fast response”
- “7/8” balanced dome tweeter”
- “Elegant Yamaha Piano Black finish, plus choice of three other finishes to match diverse interior”
Two of those five are the cable and the warranty. Neither of the other eleven products on this shelf offers either.
The cable and the warranty are the distinguishing features
Four meters of speaker cable. Twelve other listings here supply none — and two of them, both Goldwoods, fit spring-loaded raw wire terminals, which take bare wire only, so a pre-terminated cable would not even connect.
Four meters covers a center speaker in almost any room: the receiver usually sits in the same cabinet, a meter or two away.
A warranty. Stated, without a term. Eleven other listings on this shelf mention none at all — and the only comparable commitment anywhere nearby is Dayton’s Classic B40 and B65 bookshelf models, which publish five years.
Worth setting against Dayton’s C40 at $55.98, which supplies no cable and fits gold-plated binding posts for banana plugs — the better connector, with the cable left to you.
Aluminum cones, and the trade behind “extra-fast”
Speed in a cone means stiffness relative to mass.
A cone has to move as a single piece. When it flexes instead, that is cone breakup, and it adds frequencies that were never in the signal. Stiffness resists flexing; low mass lets the cone start and stop quickly. So a stiff, light cone tracks a sharp transient — a drum strike, a consonant — more faithfully.
Aluminum is both stiff and light. What it lacks is damping: when it finally does resonate it rings, at a sharp frequency, and if that resonance falls inside the band the driver covers it is audible as a hardness. The usual remedy is to set the crossover below it.
On this shelf the materials split roughly into the stiff camp — aluminum here, fiberglass (Neumitech), carbon fiber (both Miccas) — and the damped camp — cellulose pulp (Triangle), poly (Dayton), polypropylene (Goldwood), polycellulose (JBL).
Seven-eighths of an inch, between the two camps
About 0.87 in (22 mm). The shelf runs: 0.51 in (13 mm) (Polk) · 0.75 in (19 mm) (all three Miccas) · 0.87 in (22 mm) (this) · 0.98 in (25 mm) (Dayton, both Goldwoods, Klipsch, JBL, Neumitech, Triangle).
A larger dome moves more air, distorts less at volume, and can hand over to the woofer lower — keeping midrange strain off a small driver. A smaller dome is lighter, extends higher, and spreads treble more widely, which on a center speaker facing a wide sofa is worth something.
“Balanced dome” is Yamaha’s own term, and the listing does not define it.
A hundred and thirty-two millimeters, which is practical
The second slimmest cabinet here, after the Polk TL1 at 3.50 in (89 mm).
A center speaker has to fit either under a television on a shelf — where the screen’s lower edge and the stand’s feet set a hard limit — or on a wall beneath a mounted panel, where anything tall blocks the picture or the infrared receiver.
At the other end of this shelf the Neumitech is 8.50 in (216 mm), the Sony 220 and the Triangle 259. Measure first.
Four finishes is also more choice than anything else here offers.
What a hundred and forty dollars does not tell you
No woofer size, which is the most basic figure a speaker can publish. Every other listing on this shelf gives one — from 2.5 inches (Polk) to 6.5 (Triangle) — and cone area goes as the square of the radius, so it is the single most consequential number. At this price, Neumitech’s CS5 at $89.99 publishes 5-inch woofers.
No frequency response. Four products here publish one, and only Klipsch publishes a tolerance (“89Hz - 21kHz plus/- 3dB”), which is what makes such a figure mean anything.
No sensitivity, which decides what amplifier you need — every 3 dB being a doubling of power. The four published figures here span 95 dB (Klipsch) to 86 dB (Micca G2): a factor of eight.
No impedance and no power handling.
No port direction. The bullet says “bass-reflex” without saying which way the vent fires — and on a center speaker that is the key question, since a rear port shoved into a cabinet is choked. Triangle’s BRC2 alone publishes front-facing vents.
1,996 g and 132 × 340 × 107 mm are published.
Prices quoted in this text were read on October 4, 2026. The live price is at the top of the page.
