Onkyo TX-NR709 Review

Some more Onkyo TX-NR709 Reviews

Best Receiver for the Price!!

It's hard to keep reviews like this short, because there are SO many features on this thing. I'll go over some of the things that stand out to me. 

The internet radio is one of our favorite functions, you can even browse THOUSANDS of internet radio stations and it's seemlessly intergrated in the receiver. We began listening to a radio station in Hong Kong! Pandora sounds great, so does last FM. The music title/artist displays on the receiver's screen while the song is playing... WOW. 

DLNA intergration: Ive used the unit to stream music to the receiver and it works well. My windows 7 PC is setup with Tversity (google it) and it found all my files right away. There is a slight lag browsing the files, but the sound is good regardless.

Audyssey's MULTIEQ XT is the BIGGEST reason why I chose this receiver, for the price/performance... it cannot beat! If it's one thing that affects your sound quality, is the quality of your analyzer (Audyssey, yamaha's YPAO, pioneer's MCACC). If you look at the audio/video forums, this is a feature that is high sought after. This one is better than the Audyssey 2EQ system because it has better crossover control.

Video performance is flawless... perfect 1080p upscaling 

There is bi-amp capability, if you want that. I use it, and it's been perfect so far. 

BTW: I was previously debating between the Pioneer 1021k because it has 1.) airplay and 2.) they have a nifty ipad/ipod/iphone app. However, what pushed me over was that 1.) airplay does not support video, which I would have just use Apple TV 2 instead, which in the future should be able to do screen mirroring for the ipad :) 2.) As for the app, if u read the reviews, it's just 'cool' but not very useful. In contrast, there is an app for Onkyo receivers as well that's on sale at the app store (at the time of writing ) $5. I played with it, but honestly, i'm not going to use my ipad as a remote. Cool, but not practical for me. 

All in all, this is excellent receiver for the price!

If you're deciding between the 609 and 809... I didn't get the 609 because I really wanted MultiEQ XT. I didn't get the 809 because it's substantially more money for extra power output (unlikely will make a difference for most people) and the supposedly more powerful video processor. So the 709 hit the spot for me.

Onkyo Clearly Beat the Competition!!

I purchased this receiver along with two other mid-level receivers (RX-V867, VSX-33 and the NR709). I kept the Onkyo and returned the Yamaha and Pioneer. 

The video performance of the QDEO chipset was superior to the other two receivers by a wide margin. The Onkyo was the only receiver that could deal with the low contrast in dimily lit scenes in BD versions of 'Road to Perdition', 'Kingdom of Heaven' and 'Slumdog Millionaire' straight out of the box with no tweaking of the video settings.

I sampled BD versions of the 'The Police-Certifiable', 'Bon Jovi-Live at Madison Square Garden' and U2 'Live at Slane Castle' to test music playback quality. The DTS playback on the U2 Video showcases what this unit is capable of. The Pioneer and Yamaha performed well sonically however the Onkyo had the edge in power as I didn't have to get anywhere near reference power to drive my Bose 601's to acceptable levels which was not the case with the VSX-33 or the V867.

I rolled the dice on this one as I had been using a Sony ES receiver prior to this however I think for the price point and feature set Onkyo blows away Sony and I'm not looking back. With this unit you won't have to settle for crappy video just to get good audio or vice-versa. LOVE it!!