Onkyo TX-NR838 Pro Reviews

From a hands-on standpoint, I had few complaints about Onkyo’s latest. It’s no phoenix of ergonomics, but the receiver is eminently usable with its somewhat cluttered but workmanlike remote control, generally sensible menu organization, and excellent onscreen quickness. The TX-NR838 incorporates Onkyo’s InstaPrevue feature that lets you call up low-frame-rate onscreen thumbnails of all active HDMI sources and select among them via cursor, which might prove useful to those with more than just one live HDMI source. (But I found it no faster, in fact, at the actual switching, and you have to call up the onscreen thumbnails through a couple of menu moves first.) There’s also built-in Bluetooth, of course (seems like everything with a battery or a power cord these days now must include this), and this year’s revised model also offers the ability to route different, high-def HDMI video programs to two rooms simultaneously, via its two HDMI outputs, another real boon to multiroomers. Onkyo makes available free Apple and Android apps on the appropriate download stores. These make operations a bit more fun and offer quicker access to many features, but they’re short on user-customizations or other more leading-edge opportunities. None of this is exactly groundbreaking. Nor is the TX-NR838’s very fine fundamental audio and video performance, which is merely what we all count on from any new Onkyo. But the TX-NR838 does perfectly fit the Brand O philosophy in all other ways we expect: It is incrementally better than the one it replaces, richly endowed with features (several of which are thoughtfully useful) and up-to-date technologies, and fairly priced.