Price Paid:  $350.00 from Richer Sounds

Summary:
This is a slightly unfair review seeing as this amp as spent alot of time in 2ch stereo mode. In this mode it is easy to distinguish against simarlaly priced stereo amplifiers. The yamaha delivers alot of the sound but lacks refinement, which is a shame, I would also say that the manufacturers output ratings are somewhat of an overstatement, again compared with a similarly priced dedicated stereo amp with around half the power and you will see what I mean. The amp itself is well constructed as norm with yammys. The menu and even the remote are relatively straight-forward to master IMHO.

I would recommend paying no more than £200 for stereo speakers, anymore and I would consider this to be un-economical.

Overall,good stereo amp providing your speakers are not too revealing..

Strengths:
Exciting sound, well built, good tuner.

Weaknesses:
Lacks refinement, not quite the power house you would expect.

Similar Products Used:
Yamaha DSP-592.
Tannoy m2
Tannoy mx1
Monitor audio silver S8's
Marantz 63ki sig.

Price Paid:  $799.00 from Good Guys

Summary:
I purchased the RXV-800 the first month it was available and was excited about the 5 channel stereo. Going from an old Sony theater package to the Yamaha had much better processing, and showed its muscles in both the 5 channel stereo music playback and 100 watt to each rear speaker during surround playback. At the time, I was using JBL speakers; all of which were rated at 150 watts each with a 92db sensitivity rating. For a 5 channel receiver, it did its job well and made the JBL's shine. I sold it to move on to the RXV-2400.

Strengths:
Plenty of power for the JBL's. Simple to use DSP's for both music and theater. First model with 5-channel stereo. Good if you have marginal speakers.

Weaknesses:
Limited compared to the newer RXV line.
None, if your sticking to a budget with 5-channel playback

Similar Products Used:
Sony STR line previous, JBL, Monster Power, Yamaha universal player(at the time)

Price Paid:  $700.00 from Online

Summary:
The Receiver is a great bargain and very solid made. I like the slim and learning remote, once set up, it controls all equipment very well. Opposite to other postings I can state that the central part of the terminals can be removed so that they can take banana plugs. Tuner part is a lot weaker than the quality of the amp.

Strengths:
Solid made
Remote
Power
DSP settings

Weaknesses:
Built in tuner is sounding "weak", missing bass, all other inputs are working without issues

Price Paid:  $300.00

Summary:
This reciever is acceptionaly good. It plays nice on movies and pretty good on stereo. Huge inprovment on a piece of junk kenwood reciver I use to have. Only thing im giving it an 4/5 is becuase my friend had an Denon AVR-3300 and it blows it away. It is also in the same price rang.

Strengths:
Pretty good on stereo and movies

Weaknesses:
not very punchy and lacks watts

Similar Products Used:
Denon AVR-3300

Price Paid:  $1600.00 from retravision

Summary:
I have had this reciever for 2.5yrs now, and I have had no problems what so ever.It delivers clean sound for music and enough power to rumble the room in movies. However the salesman at retravision told me that this amp had the ability to output 6.1 discrete. I should have done more homework! but the dts-es 6.1 matrix works well, but not that much advantage over 5.1 soundtracks.The remote is not too good in the dark when trying to switch modes(dvd to tv etc). Dvd-audio is magic through 6 channel input too. 4 stars only because I expected 6.1 discrete, otherwise 5/5

Strengths:
powerful,TOPart technology, heaps of inputs, learning remote,ability to output 6.1 recordings, 2 sets of front speaker terminals.

Weaknesses:
no pro-logic 2, remote, a tad pricy but worth it

Similar Products Used:
none