Home > Consumer Reviews > Polk Audio RC80i 2-Way In-Ceiling Speakers (Pair, White)

These speakers are great. Installation was much easier because the large, 8" opening you cut into the wall/ceiling makes it much easier to fish speaker wire. The mounting brackets securely fasten to the wall so there is no shaking or rattling. The tweeter can easily pivot to aim at your listening position. These are voice matched to the Polk "Monitor" series speakers, so match with any other RC series in-wall speaker, CS1 or CS2 center channel speaker, and PSW10 or PSW12 subwoofer.

My only 2 complaints, which were not enough to drop the rating, are:
1) The speaker cutout template turned out to be a tad small, and I had to go around with a keyhole saw again to make it 1/8" larger to fit the speaker all the way. That made it a little messier, but it ended up fine.
2) The speaker grill is pretty hard to remove, but you only have to do that once, and you want it to fit snugly anyways.

I purchased 4 of the RC80i for surround sound in my living room, lefts and rights for both front and back speakers. My rationale in purchasing in-ceiling speakers was the desire not to have a room filled with visible speakers. The mounting was very easy. Just cut the holes via the template and slide them in. The grilles fit snug and I'm sure will be a challenge if I ever have to remove them. The directional tweeter design is great and a must with in-ceiling speakers. Unfortunately, I was hoping for a little better fidelity. The speakers lack the high frequencies. They're good when listening to movies but you can hear the difference when listening to music. I set my expectations too high and have to remind myself of the price.

I installed a pair of these in the kitchen, after which my wife and I both had one of those mouth-open, "wow" experiences. They flood the room with deep, rich sound: crips highs and full, round lows. You can angle the tweeters to "aim" them better, but I didn't want one particular sweet spot in the kitchen, so I left them pointing directly downwards. Awesome.

The installation is quite easy as well. I found that with a carefully cut hole I had no problems at all with speaker insertion. As with the other reviews, I had a devil of a time getting the speaker grilles off, and was afraid I might pull out one of the tiny holes with the paperclip. Polk would do better to package these with the grilles off so that the installer can skip that step. However, I found that putting them back on was easy - you just have to make sure you put them back on with an even insertion on all edges and then work your way around little by little...you can't fully insert them on one end and make the rest fit, they are that tight.

Bottom line: I love these and highly recommend them.

We installed these in our master bedroom and bath; sound is awesome. We also painted the speakers to match the walls - the blend right in.

My buddy told me these were very easy to install. He kept telling me what a smart design the locking mechanism is. They sound great. The Omni directional tweeters make up for any problems that might arise from less than ideal speaker placement due to shape of your A/V room. My ceiling is textured white, so these speakers almost disappear until you turn them on.