AV Receivers

For many years, the general perception of the Canadian brand NAD might best have been summed up as ‘workmanlike.’ Behind that rather prosaic grey livery, the engineering was solid, reliable and normally very effective but rarely did it cause a huge amount of excitement. This isn’t to say there haven’t been some great NAD products – there have been several, including the predecessors to the models on test here – but the brand was about worth rather than superficial excitement.

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...

The £500 AVR market is more competitive than the final stages of The Great British Bake-Off. These days, it’s no good simply offering multichannel decoding and amplification with the odd DSP mode and a raft of HDMI sockets. No: you have to spread the love and get your AVR to cosy up to all the other technological toys that are stuffed with entertainment content, including smartphones and servers. And the best way to do that is sans wires.

The Marantz NR1605 is the latest update to the brand's increasingly popular slimline AVR line. With sales of traditional home cinema receivers shrinking faster than the crown jewels of a skinny-dipping Inuit, AV brands have been looking for ways to curry favour with disenchanted cinemaniacs. One solution is to add Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the other is to embrace a leaner form factor. Here Marantz has done both. 

Onkyo's TX-NR929 is not one of the brand's heavyweight offerings, but this well-priced receiver – it now sells for around £1,000, after initially launching at nearer £1,500 – packs enough performance and feature tricks to comfortably drive and tune most people's setups. The value for money offered is superb, and it's therefore easily recommended.

Pioneer’s range of AV receivers caters to budgets from the extremely frugal to the decidedly lavish. If you feel that you sit in the latter category, you will need to look at the top of the pile and the SC-LX87. And, although this flagship might not be as pricey as some of the company's previous one-box offerings (such as the SC-LX90), it's still a very serious amplifier indeed.