Price Paid:  $150.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
For the money, you cannot find a better and more reliable reciever than the ones built by Yamaha. I had my original reciever for 12 years, and it still works like the day I bought it. As far as this reciever, and cannot say anything bad at all about it. Easy to use, simple and sounds great. I have also had other HT recievers in the past that would have absolutely no bass sound if you didn't have a sub woofer attached to it, but with the HTR 5230 there is enough bass if you have efficient enough speakers attached.

A super reciever for the buck!!

Strengths:
Easy to set up, nice sound, plenty of power, simple but effective remote

Weaknesses:
none so far

Similar Products Used:
Denon, Yamaha, Klipsch Speakers, PSB Speakers

Price Paid:  $115.00 from 6th Ave.

Summary:
How can they sell it this cheap?

Strengths:
Great sound and power for $115!. A steal. Seems more powerful than my old 5 X 100 watt Sony. Easy to install. Switches for two sets of main speakers. Dolby Digital, Prologic, etc.

Weaknesses:
None so far. Doesn't have DTS.

Similar Products Used:
Sony...345

Price Paid:  $200.00

Summary:
For a casual listener like myself, its a great product. Its fun to try different settings like Sci-Fi and Adventure mode for home movie and Jazz and Concert Hall mode for music listening. It adds more flavor to the sound. If you don't have kick @$$ speakers, why spend money on a kick @$$ receiver? It won't be compatable. I have a set of decent consumer grade speakers and this receiver does the job well.

Strengths:
- Price
- Various music and HT mode

Weaknesses:
- None at this price

Similar Products Used:
None

Price Paid:  $250.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
This Receiever belonged to my roomate. Worked well until we could upgrade to seperates. Unit very easy to setup and use. Worked well with my Phase Technology 10.5 speakers since they had a built in 100 watt amp for the 10 inch woofer in them , the receiever only powered the mid and highs.. Recently upgraded to Harman Kardon AVR-210 witch is a nicer unit but costs $600.00 so that is kind of a apples to oranges comparison. Hooked up the pre amp outs to a Acurus 100x3 amp. to run the front three channels of the home theater setup I have.. But back to the Yamaha unit for $250.00 you can't beat it.! I would recommend it to anyone starting up a home theater set-up that don't care about not having DTS.

Strengths:
Very good sound for the price. easy to setup , A solid 60 watts per channel, Very reliable never had a problem

Weaknesses:
No DTS

Similar Products Used:
Pioneer, Sony, Harmon Kardon AVR-210

Price Paid:  $150.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
I bought this amp on clearance. It was an impulse buy. I was actually going to look at the Sony str-de545 and 845. I saw this one sitting in the middle of the floor and thought about it real hard. I went and got my vcr player and came back to think about the amp some more. I didn't want to get it because it was only rated at 60 watts per channel and it didn't have a dts decoder. I thought about it a minute or 2 more, and thought it would be worth it for half the price of one that did. I made sure it wasn't an open item or refurb and then decided to get one.

I got it home and hooked up and was surprised. It sounded good. Not much bass response though. Read through the manual and found the Bass out to SW, Both, or MAIN function. Tried playing with that some, no change. Through my own testing I found that only works when the mains are set to small speakers. I thought maybe it could be the speakers. They are pretty old anyways. I got a new pair of speakers, was planning on it anyways. I got the Wharfedale Modus 8's. They sound incredible with this amp. The bass response now is about 5 times what it was, seriously .. no BS there. It made that much difference. I now have to turn the bass knob down some. I turned it up with both speakers. There is only a hint of distortion once it gets almost halfway up. Nothing to bad, but it is noticeable. Yamaha recommends not going past the half way point so I didn't go that far. It was still more than enough to fill up my apartment with sound (with the new or old speakers).

The video part works as it should I think. Overall I think it is a good amp. I was almost expecting the video to not be in synch with the audio if I used the a/v ports on the reciever. This was not the case, which I am thankful for since my dvd player goes through the reciever into the vcr on to the tv.

I am pleased with the amp. I would still like to upgrade. I thought it would be a good starter reciever though given the price and features.

Strengths:
DD 5.1, Yamaha

Weaknesses:
No DTS, low power ratings