Gadgetory

hey I'm Matthew Muscovy act from CNET and we're gonna take a look at the onkyo TX NR 626 this is a mid-range 7.2 AV receiver that's selling for five hundred dollars and unlike most receivers it packs both built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi as you can see this is a full-size AV receiver so it's big boxy and it takes up a lot of space the front panel has sharp edges and corners and it's cluttered with buttons so it's not quite the nicest looking AV receiver out there the included remote is good as far as receiver remotes go there are white input buttons that are easier to see in the dim home-theater and the directional pad and volume rocker are at least centrally located the big features like I mentioned are built-in Wi-Fi and bluetooth bluetooth makes it easy to wirelessly stream audio from nearly every smartphone or tablet and Wi-Fi let you take advantage of the ACOs networking features without needing an Ethernet connection in your living room the networking features are pretty extensive including smart phone control DLNA compatibility in several integrated streaming services including Spotify Pandora Rhapsody slacker and internet radio the big missing feature that some competitors offer is airplay although that only matters if you own other Apple devices on the back you'll see there are six HDMI inputs including an MHL compatible hdmi input there are also quite a few legacy connections as well including a dedicated turntable input which is a cool extra that you don't really see very often these days sound quality on the onkyo is solid overall we had resident audio files steve guttenberg give it a listen and he found it had a really powerful sound on movies music was also detailed and it was able to create a really nice soundstage even on stereo CDs when we compared it head-to-head with the sony STR DN 1040 the Sony did win out overall sounding a little more transparent although it was pretty close we did also run into a little trouble with on Kiyo's automatic speaker calibration which never really set the level of the subwoofer right so you'll need to be comfortable making some manual tweaks to get the receiver sounding its best so overall the onkyo TX NR 626 is an excellent value with a great feature set that tops most AV receivers out this year but it's just a step behind Sony's STR DN 840 which offers most of the same features plus airplay for $50 less I'm Matthew Muscovy ak and this is the onkyo TX and are six to six