5.0 out of 5 stars Sounds great! And works as promised -- and as advertised.

f. · November 23, 2024

UPDATE: I love this thing. Upgrade from four to five stars!Once you get used to the features, the remote is simplex - a definite improvement over the ancient device and remote it replaced.Updated review comments:- Basic remote use is a one-button press ON for FM, TV, or Bluetooth (which pairs easily).- Angle and range of the remote are awesome (for me at least).- Front panel display is very readable, and the light level is adjustable to several presets to OFF.- The manual onboard volume control is micro-adjustable; no "move it a tiny bit and too loud."- Easy access to digital process presets (Stadium, Concert, Jazz, etc.), and they are "just enough."- Sound quality is exactly what I hoped for. It perfectly drives my two (really old) KEF Carina 2 speakers and two (really old) satellite Radio Shack Optimus Pro X44AV.- A simple, old-school Pyle speaker selector switch (purchased via Bolo) easily accommodates front/satellite speaker switching/combining (as there is no second set of speaker OUTs on the Sony). Nonetheless, the Sony receiver drives them both pairs of speakers as hoped -- no worries.- I can accept that there is no AM on this thing. Truth be known, about the only time I've ever used AM has been in weather emergency situations, looking for someplace - any place - to get info. However, I now have a spiffy Midland battery/solar/hand-cranked AM/FM/NOAA Weather radio (via Bolo) for that. So, no AM on the Sony is not a deal breaker.INITIAL REVIEW:My 26-year-old Sony AV Receiver was intermittently shutting down and displaying "PROTECTION." I opened it up, blew out a ton of dust, examined and found no bulging capacitors, re-assembled - and it worked flawlessly - for about 6 months.Bought this low/mid-range one to replace the old one. It works, however there are things I like and dislike:PRO:• Despite the complex possibilities of set-up and calibration with the included microphone, it was truly just plug-and-play.• The Display is clear, sufficiently bright, and easily customizable.• The remote is much smaller, more intuitive, and less complex than the old one.• Printed user manual - cool.CON:• Sony's approach (still) is to handle a lot of (almost all?) the adjustments for you. For example, no simple tone controls. "Just leave the sausage making up to us, and we'll provide the only pre-sets you'll really need."• If you were to brave following all the set-up directions in the user manual, you should first get a degree in signal path, gain structure, and network configuration.• There is no AM tuner - just FM. I get it. Fancy-ish home AV systems rarely, or never dial-up AM stations.• No B channel speaker outputs! My old receiver accommodated two main sets of speakers: "A" speakers were 5.1 plus sub for the big room, and "B" speakers were a simple L/R for another set of speakers (ours are wired, in the kitchen). To solve this missing feature, I've ordered a simple manual Pyle A/B switch (actually A/B/C/D) to take the output of the receiver and have the option of playing just A, B, or both A and B (like the old unit had built-in).About that A, no B thing: None of the Sony AV Receivers I researched from base model to those costing thousands, have outputs for a B set of speakers. None. If I missed one, would love to know about it.Also, all my speakers are 8 Ω, so if this doubling-up on load via the Pyle switch yields impedance woes, I'll update this review.

5.0 out of 5 stars Aesthetic, slim, intuitive, capable

M. · April 6, 2024

I had unique needs and this unit met almost all of them and came in much lower than my max budget. Commentary below:Dimensions: needed to be as short as possible for future cabinet building/fitting. This is the shortest unit i could find that met my other criteria.Surround: needed at least 5.1 with MCACC. I built my system out of a variety of equipment at differing impedance levels and cone sizes per channel. The MCACC feature worked wonders and saved hours of fine tuning the sound field.Performance: needed to perform at a variety of impedance levels per channel and rather low impedance for home audio. I make my stuff out of car audio equipment which is usually lower than their listed 4ohm value. Home audio is usually listed at 8ohm. This units amp lists a range of 6-16 ohm per channel. It's driving 10 speakers (2/channel in series) each channel between 6.3 and 8ohms. I haven't measured it yet but the amp's subwoofer pre-out seems to be 1-2volts which is acceptable. With the preface that I know what I'm doing and 6.5in is my largest cone, this thing will hurt my ears before it clips. So, for me, wattage is a non-issue.Features: it has MCACC. Use it. Bluetooth it works great. Dimmer: I use this in a bedroom and sometimes for looping thunder sounds to sleep to. The dimmer will cut the display down to 50% or turn it off entirely. It also turns off the blue Bluetooth light. Incredibly thoughtful engineering for sleeping applications. Processing: sony's smart surround setting (HD somethingorother) will automatically pass through DTS and Dolby (and pressing display on the remote will tell you what its passing through so you don't have to guess) and more importantly it will automatically play stereo sources in multi channel stereo (aka extended stereo)Shortcomings (all easy to know from listing and photos):Surround wire terminals aren't banana plug compatible but the front channels are.There's no full range pre-out for another zone.Volume: level is displayed in a unit-less value, would prefer actual decibel valuesNetwork: ethernet port for basic smart home control functions would be nice.

4.0 out of 5 stars It works great so far (Bought it 12/1/24)

R.J. · February 15, 2025

Works great so far. Using it for 5.1 set-up. Great sound thru my Polk/Pioneer speakers. Like how it changes audio inputs automatically when I switch from TV streaming to cable viewing. Have a 30-year-old CD player hooked to it and it sounds great. Picks up radio stations great as well. Nice unit, not your high end unit but for my 70+ year old ears it's great. My first experience with Sony receivers, it replaced a malfunctioning Onkyo unit. Have preferred Pioneer receivers over the years but very happy with this Sony unit so far.

5.0 out of 5 stars Super sound at budget price

C.T. · March 28, 2025

Could not be happier with purchase. Does an outstanding job and was easy to set up. Sound quality is great. Have a 5.1 set up. Definitely use an HDMI connection for sound vs. optical to get the most out of the system. And use a high quality cable like a 4k rated. Not all HDMI cables are the same. I originally bought a Pyle amp and returned it due to sound issues. Sound would just drop out at times.

Excelente amplificador

H.H.E. · October 14, 2023

Me gustó mucho el amplificador, es de muy fácil uso, la calidad y potencia de audio es excepcional, garantía de la calidad de SONY.Conecté mi Televisión, Bluray, tornamesa, computadora, y con el plus del Bluetooth se conecta mi celular. TODOS funcionan excelente.

It works as intended but a pre-amp rca or 1/4 for active speakers would be nice

C.d.A. · March 16, 2024

I like it. It works as intended, I keep discovering new features and ways to use it as I read the manuals more often and do some tests.It's foot print is small compared to others, but be cautious about the height it says it has, because I believe the feets are not included in that height. I do love my new TV stand I bought to fit this as the other had 6" but this supposed ≈5" wouldn't fit in. I would say it's height with feet is about 6.25" to 6.5"The Led display on the device could be bigger/larger imo but for what we need it's good enough. The TV on-screen menu is easier to play with but the built-in display at least prevents to have to quit what you're doing to go into the hdmi earc input use the on-screen display so I would say it's good that we have both options even if the built-in can feel limited. At least the shortening of the options makes it obvious for most, and the online official manual on the sony website makes it easy to know what you're tweaking and how to get there with a step by step guide.The only cons for me so far are that I feel that only 4 hdmi ins is a very small amount. A lot of us has an xbox, switch, ps5, pc and more to connect onto these things so 4 built-in hdmi in gets quickly filled to the max. At least we can use the unused tv hdmi inputs to fill in whats left which is good.The other con is there isn't a pre-amp output for active speakers. Hopefully you already own passive speakers or else be ready to shell them extra $$$ like I ended up doing.The other con is the sound from hdmi inputs is loud, but from the TV it cam be quiet. Luckily there is a built-in TV DB offset which permits to add an extra 6db that helps a lot. I still felt the sound was quiet so I went into the AMP menu and found I can boost individual speakers in DB. I ended up boosting each by a few extra DBs to compensate and now it's loud enough compared to the hdmi inputs. If you used the included calibration mic, I recommend to keep the differences in DB from each speakers. Example: I had the Fronts at 0 and the sub at -1.5 from the calibration, I boosted 4.5db the fronts and the sub went to 3 to keep that 1.5db in difference. This permits to keep the balanced sound the calibration did for us, while boosting extras to compensate for the weaker TV ouput.The other con which is unrelated to the receiver, damn there isn't a lot of good 5.1 content out there. Seriously. In games, except hearing a few sounds from behind me from times to times, not much. In movies and series, only very rarely do I stumbled upon one that actually make use of the 5.1, most are stereo and that's it. I'm still glad I have it, but I was expecting to get that good surround sound most of the time rather than only sometimes.All in all, I am satisfied. Truly. Everything it throwed at me could be fixed by simply knowing how to properly tweaked it and reading its very simple manual.Please be aware that the cons I faced might be because this is my first AV Receiver, but maybe my music studio experience helped me a lot to figure out how to properly tweak it to get the most of it in every situation i encountered so far.

Qualidade Sony

a.l. · November 12, 2023

Aparelho supriu minhas espectativas sobre sistemas de som.

Easy to set up, works great.

M. · September 3, 2019

I was using a pretty good Pioneer receiver to pass my HDMI devices through to my TV. Unfortunately this receiver started freezing. The audio would work, but no selections would. Checking around the 'net showed this would likely be a bad capacitor, and since this is at least an 8-year old receiver, I decided to replace it (no schematic, and lots of capacitors to replace).So, I bought a "renewed" (fancy word for refurbished) Pioneer through Bolo from a seller. That was a bad joke on me because this receiver didn't work either. It would shut off a few seconds after being switched on (apparently this is a common fault with this model of Pioneer receiver). This is the second refurb I have gotten off of Bolo that didn't work. I won't try a third time. I checked online and found out that one Chinese company has purchased Onkyo, Denon and Pioneer. Considering all the problems Canada has been having with China lately and the fact that this supposedly refurbished receiver still didn't work, I decided against purchasing another of these brands.I have an older 46" Sony TV that is older than my old Pioneer receiver, and it still works perfectly. This convinced me to go with this Sony.Well, after reading the instructions (Gasp!) it was very easy to set up. It works perfectly with my old Polk Audio surround speakers and sub (5.1), and it sounds very good. I have only tried it on my cable box and the FM tuner, but the sound was every bit as good as the Pioneer was.Turn it on, set the language and time/date and the receiver goes into setup mode. You plug in a provided microphone and place it in the most common sitting position and it sets up the speakers for you. Sounds good, and only took a minute. Once done, everything was perfect. My old Logitech Harmony universal remote even had the the correct device so I didn't have to manually set up every button on the remote (however, the categories for listening to music do not include using the Bluetooth input as an option for some reason, so to use Bluetooth I would have to use the remote that came with the receiver). Note that I have not tested Bluetooth yet.I think the price is comparable with what the Pioneer cost years ago, and hopefully it will last longer. It's gotta be better quality than those brands that were bought out by China. That's really too bad. The Pioneer brand used to be a very well respected brand.Overall, I am happy with this purchase, and I respect Sony as a brand name. I would say this receiver is worth the price I paid ($348.00).

Buena Relación precio - calidad

A.H. · June 3, 2019

funciona muy bien, es básico en cuanto opciones y nivel de ajustes, pero esto no limita su desempeño. Lo tengo conectado a un set con dos torres, tres bocinas tipo estante y sub yamaha, suena muy bien. Su configuración y compatibilidad con otros dispositivos es muy amigable, vale bien lo que cuesta