Ouput wattage on speakers/stereos ... what does it mean?

[DaRuSsIaMaN]

Perhaps this belongs in "general hardware", but that's supposed to be PC related, I thought.

Anyway, I'm buying a compact stereo. Three that I'm considering are this one and this one by panasonic and this one by sony. I think I'm leaning towards the second panasonic right now, the SC-PM23.

So my question is, what does the output wattage rating mean? What is that supposed to tell me? The first panasonic one, the SC-EN25 has an output wattage of 6. The second panasonic has an output wattage of 40. Well that sounds like a huge difference, yet both systems seem to have equally praising reviews. The sony one also has significantly more output wattage than the first panasonic, but less than the second. So what do these mean? If I went on purely customer reviews, it seems like it doesn't mean much because all the reviews say the sound is great and loud enough.

Any help greatly appreciated, thanks

 

[Swansen]

Yeah, the middle one, the second Panasonic in the line-up is the nicest, its a pretty decent little shelf system. I'm not exactly sure what your using it for, but its the best out of those three systems. Also the "Watts Total" are the total wattage for the whole system, so 20x2. That and they have full range speaker, (probably not much low at all, but still kinda there). I guess if you have another question write back.

 

[DaRuSsIaMaN]

Thanks. Any second opinions? I still don't understand what the output wattage means. Is it a measure of how loud the speakers can go?

 

[Swansen]

Well, i guess thats one way of looking at it, but output wattage is just the total amount of power it can output. So i guess in a sense you can measure it as how loud it can go, but there are other factors as well, such as the manufacturer, receiver, cable for the speakers, ect.

 

[zeus]

Ive never 100% understood it all. Especially when £4000 amps have 4w output n stuff! Or at least they did 10 years ago when I bought my hi-fi.