Price Paid:  $200.00 from Sears

Summary:
The Dennon AVR 681 at the time had all the big is was of the best bangs for its buck. Dennon is a high end company that had taken a chance on marketing to the middle range to lower price recievers. This is why many people may not have heard of Dennon. If you go to dennon.com you will see that there cheepest reciever will start at 200.00 and got up to 7000.00.
For the price this is one of the best recievers you could get. It had all of the charicteristics off a high end for much much less. The true rating for surrond sound though it says 90 watts @ 6 ohms is the understanding of stereo sound which is 2 speakers and the sub. Surrond which is 5 channels is 60 watts @ 8 ohms.

Strengths:
For the money its a steel

tons of features to play with

dennons reciever lets you adjust all types of sound fields

extra spot for a second set of front speakers

Weaknesses:
Im good with this stuff and some of the features still came hard to figure out

The most confussing controller i have ever seen. More buttons than a apollo spaceship

lower amount of watts per channel

menu screnes are not easily accesable

only one coaxil input

Similar Products Used:
yamaha
aiwa
sony
pioneer
onkyo

Price Paid:  $200.00 from sears

Summary:
My unit came without a manual so it's hard to tell what level of dolby it has.
I haven't had any serious problems with it but it does seem to run hot, even at low levels.the 90 watts is not true power,Its music power.

Strengths:
alot of features for the money

Weaknesses:
poor display , not detailed enough.
low output signal on remote.
too many functions on one button.

Similar Products Used:
Toshiba SD5109 dvd
Carver avr 100
Yamaha E-1000 pro logic unit

Price Paid:  $500.00 from Naturally Wired

Summary:
Stay away from this model.

Strengths:
Great sound, great features. Relatively easy to use.

Weaknesses:
Three problems in 16 months. First, a main resistor that shut down the entire system. Second and Third problems were the same: Left channel went silent during TV mode (was fine with CD, DVD, etc., however). All problems required repair from Denon. Don't buy this product unless you're prepared to have a significant amount of downtime while Denon takes 2-4 weeks to repair each issue. Unacceptable performance from a good name....a true lemon.

Similar Products Used:
none

Price Paid:  $120.00 from sears

Summary:
i paid 120.oo for it and i had a kenwood before and the denon sounds great and have spent lots on others before and and not been near as happy!!!

Strengths:
easy to use and easy to set up.

Weaknesses:
none for the price

Similar Products Used:
kenwood

Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
Im Looking For A Copy Of The Origanal Manual For The AVR-681
Denons Help Stinks. So Does There Attitudes.

Strengths:
There Stereos Are Great

Weaknesses:
No Decent Help Line Without The Attitudes

Similar Products Used:
Dvd-1000