Review: Canton Pro XL.3

Canton Pro XL.3 is a very compact outdoor speaker, but still Canton’s largest. You can choose between white or black.

The speakers are made for easy wall mounting: First you mount the wall bracket on the wall, based on whether you want horizontal or vertical mounting (or what about slanting?). Then turn mount the speaker easily with two included clamps. The speaker can be rotated almost 90 degrees in each direction from the center position.

The sound of Canton Pro XL.3

Singing voices – female as well as male – sound surprisingly rich, considering the compact dimensions of the speakers. Billie Eilish’s voice on the Bond song No Time To Die has a nice fullness in the chest sound area, and the piano has a warm fullness that is easy to like.

With quiet and not too complex music without much bass, Canton sounds perfectly fine. The treble could well have been more distinct, it gets a little woolly – but no big deal.

The problem is that most music has bass in it, and you want to be able to turn up the volume beyond pure background noise. Especially outdoors, where the sound from the speakers tend to be lost in the surroundings.

As the Eilish song gradually escalates, the speakers fail to keep up. Instead, they kneel, and bass tones set off a distortion that propagates far up in the treble range. It shrinks metallically every time a bass note tries. Ariana Grande never offers to dance. A narrow chamber ensemble can work well, but only if the double bass takes it easy.

If you want these, you must either play very silent, or use a processor that can do bass management. And send the bass frequencies to a subwoofer instead. Something we do not expect you to bother doing.

Conclusion

Canton Pro XL.3 are a pair of compact outdoor speakers. They do sound fuller than they look, but there is also the problem. Because even if they manage to play vocals well on their own, it becomes something quite different as soon as the bass guitar or drums come in. Not only does it get flat, but also distorted. The Canton speakers fail to catch up with their bigger competitors, and although these are the most affordable in the field, one can not say they offer much for the money. We simply have to say we are a little disappointed.