Polk Audio Signature Elite ES35 Center Channel Speaker

It will do the job.

I consider myself a minor league audiophile. I typically spend $2K-or-so every year on fun new gear. I purchased this speaker because we had limited space for a center channel in the rental home we're currently living in because the giant TV is mounted very close to the mantle. So I needed something with a low height profile. We are all getting older, and hearing dialogue on movies is getting harder and harder. So, I added this center channel, and hooked it up to my Onkyo. It sounds... fine. Nothing special, but very passable given my constraints. It's clearly very well made, heavy, and well thought out from an integration perspective. I have just heard things that are in this small of a form factor that sound a tad bit better.

Maxx

January 25, 2026

Beautiful Center Channel ES35 White

First, the speaker comes packaged properly with styrofoam all the way around the speaker on each axis, and the speaker is wrapped in a protective cover. You can rest assured that your speaker should not be damaged when it gets to you. Mine was in perfect condition, and the USPS was involved some of the way.

The speaker comes with a Manual that includes every speaker in the Elite Signature Series, which is nice.

The speaker comes with a wall mounting template, rubber feet, and a registration card with your serial number in tiny letters.

Registering the speaker on the Polk Audio Website was a pain because there is no designation for the White ES35. I just had to choose the Black ES35, and in the note, I put that it is White. Then my Password didn’t work. I’m not sure if the registration has its own login section or not, but after a bit I finally registered the speaker.

I have a white wood entertainment center and this Polk ES35 looks beautiful sitting on it. I may need to raise the TV a half inch, I’m going to break in the speaker first while I decide.

The ES35 comes with a nice Magnetic cover. I’m not sure I will use it because the speaker looks so good with it off.

I’ll update after a few months. The speaker sounds great, but I need to break it in for 20 to 30 hours at lower volumes. The bass on this speaker is amazing. I’ve never had this much action on a center channel before. I can already hear how much range my old center was missing out on, and voices are so much clearer and full of range. Definitely happy so far….

Sounds and Looks Great

I completed my 7.1 system in my room. This line looks very good and they sound great. I came from soundbars (Sonos, Samsung, and LG) and they could never. They also include built in mounts so no extra mounts needed just some wall anchors and your appropriate mounting tools

Great looking and sounding speakers.

I'm a Klipsch guy but wanted white speakers for the sides of my great room to blend in a bit. The 1500 sq ft room is shaped like a home plate so the sound design was a bit unique. I wanted to be able to spread the midrange wider vs a single woofer/tweeter design...probably more in my head than true function but it worked great. Another thing that's probably fine but I'm not a fan of plastic keyhole mounts, especially on this unit since the keyhole mounts are a part of the bass port design. I ended up mounting these from my wall/ceiling using 5.5"L x 4"H x 1.5"W J Lip Shelf Brackets attached to Mount It articulating 2/4 screw speaker mounts with some 1/4" bolts and lock nuts, painted white. The lips of the bracket hold them just fine without strapping them. I used little round, flat silicone pieces between the speaker and bracket so it doesn't scratch the cabinet.

The cabinet has a wood grain look and looks fabulous. I'm running these on a 7.2 set up with floor speakers and 2 subs. These Polk ES35's hold up their own and happy with them. Good highs and the ported rears created good bass/mids. You'll still want a subwoofer to round out the lows.

Perfect for my purpose.

Love it! Great narrow center channel speaker.

0:10

Richard in Cabo

March 21, 2025

Very Clear Voices for Center Speaker

Both my wife and I have challenges hearing the voices sometimes on some of these shows where the background music tends to overwhelm the people who are speaking. We've tried adjusting our surround sound middle speaker quite often and have discovered we just can't get it right. So we purchased this higher end unit which cost about 50% of what the whole speaker system cost that we own. But it was well worth it because the verbiage is very clear now and though we still adjusted a little bit here and there it's a very good speaker and it does fill the need that we needed. It's also a smaller size than the other speaker that we were going to purchase. We happen to sit our 75-in TV on a table top and this speaker set fits very nicely right underneath it and it's somewhat hidden It's great for us.

william bern

March 1, 2025

Center channel speaker

Brings in a little more higher frequency for better voice clarity. Not a total answer but it definitely improvement where I was

0:18

Spectacular!!

So pleased with this purchase. Puts out phenomenal sound with no dead spots in its range. Vocals are crystal clear. And it’s slim enough to easily fit in my sound transparent floating media console (Woodwaves).

Polk amazing center speaker

The speaker image above is not of the ES 35 Polk center speaker which has (6) 3 inch woofers and 1 inch Twitter , the ES 35 is an amazing speaker with good clarity and well rounded sound, very hard speaker to beat at this price range.

Sleek looking, small but powerful center speaker

Beautiful speaker, looks great with grill on or off, sounds awesome for its size. I can hear and feel some good lows coming from this small thing. Easy to wire, the holes in the terminals are big enough for thick gauge speaker wire, and the terminals are apart enough that wires won't cross after u tighten them down. I purchased this to put below my TV in addition to my Anthony Gallo reference center, which is mounted above TV, so that dialogue will also be projected to ear level. I've purchased Polk speakers for my car, they sound excellent and this speaker is no different. It goes great with my Polk 12 inch sub that's in my entertainment room. Everything sounds awesome now, movies, music, Xbox games. Highly recommend this speaker if your looking for a center speaker that doesn't take up too much space. And damn, its pretty in white.

Amazing center channel.

Fantastic audio quality for the money. Considering that the unit is a small form factor, it still has a fair amount of depth. You can notice this in the photo where it stands out significantly from the low profile television. Not much you can do if you don't want laptop quality audio in a low profile that would match the TV. This doesn't amazing job for the form factor.

White Speaker Comes with Dark Gray Grill Cover

This review is for the Polk Signature Elite ES35 center channel speaker. I’ve been on the hunt for a white center speaker to fit discretely under a frame TV. First I’ll say the sound is great and the size is perfect. My HUGE disappointment is the color of the cover. There are no pictures of the cover on the white speakers. I found 1 review that describes it as gray, it actually looks black. So much for discreet :( I have other speakers that are white with light gray covers which would have been acceptable.

Quality Sound Easy Configuration

I really like the easy way these speakers can be configured based on your setup. I ended up using these as L/C/R speakers with an older pair of Bose speakers as my surround speakers. The only thing missing is a Sub, although not especially needed for everyday TV watching. I do the the sound would be much improved with a sub, nonetheless. The sound quality of the Polk speakers really is outstanding, even when playing music without a Sub. The hi's and lows are clearly defined and even the bass is good if a tad underwhelming in my current set-up w/o a sub. It fills the room with quality sound for the price range. At the time, I paid a little over $350 per speaker. I actually paid more for the installation and in-wall cables to them to the receiver cleanly. All in all, I would make this purchase again w/o hesitation.

Beautiful design and sound

Great sounding for center speakers, crispy and clear !

Really recommended

Great Center Channel Speaker

I was impressed with the way the speaker was packed by the manufacturer.

The speaker is heavy and looks great. No problem with fit and finish.

Dialogue through the speaker is very clear.

Very pleased with the purchase.

Great sound and feels well made

great speaker, CRAZY accurate. would buy again!

replaced a klipsch with this guy - it is far more accurate, has way more depth of field and it is over all smaller to boot. mounted under my TV in an 11ch atmos setup.

did not come with mounting hardware but i used a bolt with washers and a couple nuts. affixing a bolt to the speaker and then into a mounting bar under my TV.

i would have liked a more solid mount point than the plastic thats on the back of the speaker. i feel an aluminum mount point or some type of nutsert to put threaded rod into would have been better. this does work but just not the most solid setup.

Great speaker for the price.

Great sounding center channel. Perfect match for my ES20, Denon A/V receiver and 86" LG tv. Beautiful with or without the screen.

Perfect Center Speaker for Surround Sound System

We recently had a sound system installed by the Geek squad and the system did not include a center speaker. We upgraded our system because we are getting older and having difficulty understanding dialogue. I am not an audio expert but after the installation the sound was worse. I did a little digging and realized the center speaker is the most important for dialogue. Ordered this Wednesday morning and it was here Thursday just in time for Masters Weekend. The speaker is perfect dialogue now is very clear.

Decent Performance, Expensive

Needed to wall mount above tv so the small size and weight were needed specs. However the mounting plates on ea end of the speaker are plastic. Plates include key holes to attach to threaded speaker mounts. The plastic is too flimsy. The weight of speaker was causing it to pull through the keyhole. Had to modify and reinforce to make it work.

Sounds good, but too expensive at $400.00. If you have room to set a speaker on a shelf, there are better options at around the same price.

No Pictures of the Back?

Having a full range center speaker is great for balancing my system out. I had an issue in the mid-bass with my current set of speakers that EQ just couldn't make up.

What somewhat surprises me is there's a million pictures of the front of these speakers, but not one of the back, so I'll include some here. I myself was a bit concerned as to what type of connections it had.

When un-packing, the front shroud is magnetically attached through some wrapping, so you have to pull it off to unwrap - this leaves the diaphragms exposed, and I almost grabbed it over those cones as a result. This speaker is expensive, and is meant to be one small part of a larger system, but I have no real complaints.

lang red

October 16, 2021

Sparkles, but.

𝘁𝗹;𝗱𝗿: Adds sparkle and clarity as a center channel to existing 2-channel setup; lacking in bass presence.

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𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀:

I have an ancient set of Onkyo S-37's that have traveled with me for more than a decade, and they're not the most resolving set of speakers, but they have a presence and warmth I've grown accustomed to. I saw this center speaker and how well-received it's been thus far, so I figured I'd give it a try as an accompaniment to my current setup.

My biggest takeaway is that these don't carry their weight in the low-end. I set it up as a singular speaker to get a feel for the freq. response. The bass is more lower-mid-punch than true low-end rumble, which is a bit disappointing considering the listing had stated 'effortless bass.' I also noticed that when used standalone, the highs can be a bit sharp and sibilant.

The ES35 shines as a center-speaker accompaniment. My S37's, whose sound signature comes across warm and muddy, get a boost in the clarity and sparkle of its upper mids and highs thanks to the ES35. I notice the smaller strings sparkle in their total composition, which is a characteristic I didn't get before with just the lone Onkyo's. I can see why Polk's suggestion is as an accompaniment to a system rather than a standalone.

I do like the ES35. While I do think this speaker packs more bass than is expected of its form factor, I'd be remiss to state that it has any strengths in the low end. Their listing description set me up with higher expectations than I should have had, but nonetheless, it is certainly a solid pick to round out an existing speaker setup.