WILSON AUDIO.....BIG NAME, BIG PRICE........ARE THEY THAT GOOD?


Are Wilsons the best? are they worth the money? Looking at used watt puppy 8 or Sophia 3. 
jeffvegas
My best friend has a pair of Watt/Puppy's. Not a bad sounding loudspeaker for a little tike. The grills are comical, disintegrating foam.
I am so biased towards planar line source loudspeakers my opinion of dynamic speakers has little worth except for Tektons. 
From a value perspective Wilson's are obviously not so hot. Maybe on the used market you can get a pair for reasonable money that are not too old. Wilson owners are not the type of people who abuse their speakers. In my head there is no new loudspeaker worth more than $40 grand. 

Tony, who knows these days. Wilson is certainly well established but their market can be very fickle. One good economic downturn and companies like Wilson and Sound Labs for that matter can get into trouble in a hurry.
Companies like Klipsch will survive as they make product the vast majority can afford. Wilson also has competition now in Magico and YG. When they started they really did not have any. 

As for Range Rovers, I put money down on a Tesla Cybertruck. Now that is style:-) (triple motor with full self driving capability. FUN!) 
I was looking at Tekton Moabs but they are having trouble getting drivers to make them so its a 3 month wait minimum. I need something now.  If a Majestic 545 Sound Lab came up used, I'd be a player. Good luck finding a used pair though. Martin logans aren't doing it for me with their hybrid designs.  If I'm going planar, it's gotta be full range. Thought about Maggie 3.7i, but even with my 300 watt Krell it may not be enough power for those. Maybe I'll just get a decent speaker to get me by until something else pops up. 
What you are going to get here is of course personal answers. But you set the bar fairly low. Good is not really good or excellent. But if you are asking are they good, yes, they are. Of course, we all have our own preferences.

Yes, I've never owned them, but I have many many hours of Wilson listening experience as I have a dealer that is five minutes away. Was going to purchase Sabrina's but got a deal on TAD E-1s that I could not pass up.

Wilson with the right amp and supporting cast can be very very good. In the end, you need to hear whatever model you decide to purchase and decide if you can give it a supporting cast that will make them sing. It is never about just component X, all need to work well together and the amp/speaker interface is very critical.
I’ve owned the Sophia 3 for a couple of years. Enjoyable yes, great no.  I’ve discovered afterwards far superior speakers such as the Lawrence audio double bass, cube audio Nenuphars and Soundkaos Vox3A. The sophia’s main weaknesses are a rather limited soundstage (they were installed by Wilson) and a tweeter that sounded metallic to my ears.  
Although speaker sound is of course a personal preference, I'll never forget the sound of a pair of WATTs (no puppies had been added yet) that were nearly randomly placed in a designer show house in NYC decades ago. I was astonished at how lifelike the "background music" piano sounded. I haven't owned any Wilson speakers, but if they're as good as their vollyballs I imagine they're worth it.