What is great about a good speaker is that you can throw it in any situation and it can sound good.
"A jack of all trades and a master of none."
These designs are all targeted. Near-field. Small physical size. Etc. Going by your statement, a good speaker is a full-range model (since it can actually produce the full range of human hearing) that has a jack of all trades design. Perhaps that means switches to flip from near-field to far-field and DSP to accomplish the transition? But DSP can only accomplish so much due to size and weight constraints.
McDonald's food comes to mind. It excels in a wider range of use cases than gourmet and yet it is not as good as gourmet for those who want gourmet. Just because the appeal of gourmet (its applicability to different contexts) is more limited that means it's worse than McDonald's?
The person who spoke about the needs of the hi-fi workload (vis-à-vis subs) is on the right track. I don't think companies should sell speakers without companion deep-bass woofers (typically called "subs"). Their purchase can be optional but it should be considered normal for them to be implemented, not so optional.
It's also hard to see how a composite rating is not misleading when it involves comparing designs with different amounts of bass production. Having the extra "with sub" number is helpful, though. It makes me think that that is the number that should matter, not the number without the sub. The only time it seems that that would not be the case for hi-fi workloads is with very large and heavy truly full-range speakers. Even with near-field "monitors", how much bass can really be managed without large-enough woofers/panels?
A good speaker does what it sets out to do — produce a smooth response over the frequency range the designers had to choose based on a variety of variables like weight, physical size, proximity to the listener, etc. Given that "near-field monitor" is a recognized niche, decisions have to be made about dispersion/directivity. A listener who prefers an omni isn't going to prefer one with a small soundstage.
I'm also dubious about the high SPL level used here. I understand that there is a concern about getting 40 db above the noise floor but if the speaker's sound quality is significantly degraded by using such a high volume that can be a source of misleading conclusion. With active speakers it could be measuring more information about the DSP/limiter/amp.
Well, that is why the test is marked as informal.
Perhaps informal testing should not be included.
I am dubious about the word informal being a catch-all for problematic measurement strategies.