AV Receivers

Pioneer’s new flagship AVR comes to the HCC test bench fresh from its Dolby Atmos firmware upgrade, bristling with features that will have both music and movie fans salivating. It's a lavishly-engineered top-flight powerhouse that deserves an audition if you're upgrading your setup – although it does have one curious flaw...

It's getting hard to find many points of difference between AV receivers around the key £500 mark. Pioneer's VSX-1131, originally priced £550 but available now for less if you shop around, offers a specifications sheet with few surprises, beyond the fact that it's very well featured indeed. Whatever you're hoping to find here, you probably will. 

May saw Pioneer doing its traditional launch of a new range of AV receivers. As usual, the lower- and mid-range models break cover first – and the VSX-922 is one of the latter.

Anyone enjoying a game of 'spot the difference between two AV receivers' would face a stiff task if faced with Pioneer's new VSX-924 and its predecessor, the VSX-923. This £500 home cinema power-pusher sports the same neat styling and shares many of the same specifications. But dig a little deeper and you'll find some key upgrades that see Pioneer embracing new trends in AV.

Samsung isn’t known for its AV receivers, but that hasn’t stopped the Korean behemoth having a stab with this affordable 5.1-channel effort. It doesn’t have the reputation to rival audio luminaries like Onkyo, Yamaha and Denon, but the HW-C500 may attract owners of other Samsung kit who like their system’s collars and cuffs to match.

The STR-DA5800ES is an AV receiver unlike any other. With it Sony has avoided the obvious – there’s no AirPlay or Bluetooth streaming – but pushed the envelope when it comes to leading-edge signal processing and usability. It’s remarkably forgiving of your living space but offers uncompromised audio quality. For many AV enthusiasts this will sound like very good news indeed.