Best Two-Way Monitor Speakers under $700 New/Used

KEF XW10B or XQ20B, list price $1500 and $2000 respectively, on blowout at Vanns.com for $700 and $800 respectively. Both in gloss black, all curved lines, which should fit in with modern decor. The Absolute Sound flipped over the XQ20s, and named both the 10s and 20s to their Editor's Choice awards that year.

Otherwise, I'd look at what's available from Dali, PSB, Epos, Mordaunt-Short, and Monitor Audio in his price range (unless he can score a used gloss black pair of Dynaudio Excite X12s). Is he allowing extra for the stands or $700 total? In that case he should probably shoot for $500-600 to leave room for decent stands.

As for an amp, if he's using a lot of digital sources he may want to look into a Peachtree with built-in upsampling DAC with multiple digital inputs. If a general purpose integrated (even with built-in phono), he probably can't do better under $1K than the Marantz PM8004. TAS review here.

Gvsale: Since the OP mentioned that the user wanted something that would
blend into his decor and color scheme, preferably in espresso or black, and that
he would be placing the speakers on stands, I think that cleared up which use of
"monitor" we were talking about right from the start--a 2-way
stand-mounted speaker--the modern equivalent of a bookshelf speaker. Your
sweeping overview of all uses of monitor regarding playback transducers this
late into the thread is obviously not to clarify anything, but rather to give us a
history lesson and impress us with the circles you ran in 40 years ago.

Gvasale: The use of the term, "bookshelf," has fallen out of use
because these smaller speakers are no longer designed or marketed as
bookshelf speakers. I.e., they are not designed or intended to be placed on
bookshelves.

Bookshelf speakers are usually oriented for horizontal placement and have a
sealed or front-ported enclosure. The speakers of the OP have neither
restriction; many stand-mounted speakers now have rear-firing ports to get
more back wall bass reinforcement but they won't work that way if placed on
bookshelves.

Technically one might refer to the speakers under discussion as a
"compact stand-mounted speaker," but that's four words and
seven syllables when in most cases "mini-monitor" or
"monitor" will suffice. There's not a word in the English language
that has only one meaning. Nor do meanings of words remain static through
the decades. Your strict definition of "monitor" was already
weakening by the '70s, four decades ago. The finer meaning of a word is
determined by context, and the OP was plenty clear on this: small, stand-
mounted, must be available in espresso or gloss black and fit with modern
decor. I think we can safely leave 140-lb. battleship grey Altec A-7s out of the
discussion.

^^^
I've auditioned the passive Quad 12L2's and they were very evenly balanced and musically engaging. The cabinetry is very nice. The active version avoids the possibility of a bad amp matchup. If you can really find some for $700 that would be ideal.

Here's a test report of the SVS MBS-01, which is probably the earlier version of the MBS-02, as the cabinet dimensions are the same. The measurements indicate that the sensitivity is more like 87 dB and that it puts out usable bass to around 40 Hz.