I went to listen to the LS60s in January. I had the room in the store to myself since it was the middle of the day. It was at a dealer that carried a range of KEF, Focal, and McIntosh equipment. They had four different rooms, and the LS60s were in a 20 x 20 living room open at the back. It was furnished like a typical living room with a carpeted floor and a sofa in the listening position. The LS60s were streaming Tidal via WiFi. I asked if we could try an ethernet connection (since my intended use was playing locally stored files via Roon), but he couldn't set that up.
I had seen Erin's measurements and review (the Youtube video linked above), so made sure to adjust the toe-in to try 10° off axis as well as a few other orientations. The speakers were about 3 feet from the wall behind them. They had room to breath, and there was nothing else playing in the store; I was the only customer.
The sound was very disappointing. The tonality was good, as the flat in-room response would suggest. The bass was full and present, and there was reasonable left-to-right imaging. Otherwise they were some of the worst loudspeakers I've heard in the price range. It would be hard to put together a $5000 system with a poorer performance unless it was done haphazardly. No matter what I tried with positioning, the soundstage depth was constrained, the timbre of instruments was off and cartoonish, there was little texture in the bass, and detail overall was lacking. I was listening to tracks that I've heard hundreds of times on a number of systems, so I had a clear reference for the various details of the presentation that I might hear.
KEF can make very good-sounding speakers that do not have these issues, so I had to conclude that the need to fit all of the electronic components inside the speaker cabinet, the use of a lower-cost digital crossover, and the quality of the streamer/DAC were all holding back the speakers' performance significantly. After trying for nearly an hour to get some better sound from the LS60s, I had to conclude that they were just a lifestyle product meant to look nice, be convenient for audio and video, and present a casually pleasing sound without the polish or refinement that can be achieved with separate components.
This is, however, just one data point. It could be that the room, although a very realistic and unchallenging setting, was throwing something off in the sound. Perhaps the AC in the shop was really noisy even though no other systems were playing. Maybe they were a bad pair or my hearing was off that day.
