★★★★★ 1
Sound is fine thus far, but the rest is an exercise in irritation
Style: 7.2 Receiver
I selected this receiver based on spec sheet comparison to other receivers in its general class and price point, as well as reading through ‘professional’ reviews and assessments of various levels of dubiousness. The general specs as far as features and performance were the biggest factor. But there are things that can’t be discovered in ad copy and that are frequently omitted from even the most genuine and considered review.
tl;dr: This is a device with an incredible range of functionality that is hidden from the end user by poor documentation practices, and irritating design choices that bury critical menus under unstated tech dependencies. You must have an Android/iPhone capable of running their apps, and a display connected via a video out to get good output from anything but the headphone jack.
Thus far the sound output has proven quite satisfactory. It is these other factors that are dragging the rating into the proverbial pit.
The display is a bit cheap, and the backlighting across the panel tends to wash things out about half as much as it illuminates. It’s very old tech—but forgivable if the result is better components elsewhere. Still, the display on my mini battery powered air inflator is a crisp full color OLED, so I have my doubts that that is the case here.
The biggest problem is the lack of a physical manual. There’s something of a quickstart guide, but when you consider that most of the controls are via the remote and hidden in menu systems and that those menus have a certain opacity to them, it’s not enough information by long shot, especially if you’re not an experiential learner who strongly prefers to dive into the action and see what happens. If you prefer a more studious approach where you don’t even touch a button until you have some idea what it might do, this is going to be more challenging.
There are digital manuals. You can get access to the manual via the Yamaha website, or by downloading via an app that exists to serve up Yamaha manuals. This dependence on screens for vital information is grotesque and should be considered unacceptable. There are multiple problems with this approach.
One is the assumption the end user is going to have a suitable phone and be comfortable downloading an app and having a manual on a poor screen for reading technical information and diagrams on. I’m also averse to the idea of my manual requiring adequate battery power, and the only touch navigation I find acceptable in a manual is turning a page; for clarity, I mean physically moving a paper page, not tapping or swiping. Call me old fashioned, call me old, but I’ve had failures in these things before. I’ve never had a book fail to work without it being destroyed.
Another issue is longevity. I’ve had too many devices outlive the availability of their digital documentation to be on board with that being the only way it is available.
An app is also a requirement to get access to bluetooth as an input. Or at least, that is the only way I was able to get it to work, and then only because I decided to see if the “Musiccast” thing was going to get me access to bluetooth. If there is another way, it wasn’t documented, not that the way I found was particularly well documented. There was nothing saying that that was how to get access to bluetooth as an input, only a short sentence saying you had to set the input to bluetooth for it to receive audio over bluetooth—but cycling through inputs via the remote or the dial on the front never reached a bluetooth input until I had set up Musiccast.
Musiccast requires a phone with a working wifi radio to connect to it.
Once again, this dependence on an app on a phone, and presumption the end user will both have one and be willing to link it up this way is an obscenity. But it’s made worse by having basic labeled functionality hidden behind it, and poorly documented at that.
There are at least two separate menu systems, and two means of accessing them. It is possible to access them from the front panel, using a dial, but the interface is incredibly cramped on a tiny display with bad contrast and worse use of space. The other method is using the remote to trigger an overlay on video out, assuming you are using the HDMI out of the receiver to connect to a display. Ultimately, this is required to have full access to to all the settings. The menu on the unit itself is absolutely tiny in what it can do compared to the full functionality of the unit.
For example, it is required you access the on screen menu to select which speakers are in use, what kind they are, and whether or not you are wired for Bi-Amp. If you don't set these settings and your setup doesn't match the default setup, you're going to have issues. The app doesn't cover all of this, and for a device that places such heavy emphasis on it's ability to play music, it is very annoying to have to have a display hooked up to have access to critical setup functions--granted, they really want you to buy into their Musiccast eco-system, so much so that the app is only suitable for setting up Musiccast branded speakers.
I don't object to having to set things up. While it would be nice if the unit could sense whether or not an output was connected, I realize that with some of those outputs, knowing it is connected isn't sufficient as they might be put to several uses--still, that could be handled with a switch or a system menu on the device itself.
There are a few buttons on the front of the receiver, but all but the power button are capacitive buttons, marked in faint white print with poor contrast. I only discovered them when peering at what I had thought was a blank face looking for the “Connect” button called out in the manual to get Musiccast working. These are terrible buttons, and it’s clear the engineers knew it when they made the power button physical.
Internet Radio was apparently also locked behind the Musiccast app connection as it didn’t show up as an input until I connected the Musiccast app—again, not documented beyond saying you had to set the input to Internet Radio to use it.
Another irritating grievance hidden in menus only accessibly by poking around the on-screen menu, only accessible if you have a display hooked up: Eco mode. In its default state, this will partially shut down after 20 minutes of not processing sound. If hooked up to a display, this will then go to a pass-thru mode, and it will not automatically pick back up again once audio signal is again being sent.
For example, you have a console or PC hooked up to HDMI in, and the display hooked up to HDMI out/eArc. If you are using those devices in a video only mode, with no audio signal, whether it's because you paused a game, or simply got lost reading something and the music stopped, after 20 minutes, the audio processing will shut down, there will be a bit of a flicker and a snap as internal routings are switched around, and the unit will no longer output sound. All sound will iinstead be sent to the display as if the receiver didn't exist. This will persist even if you do start sending audio again. It will not turn itself back on even if you swap inputs, though other inputs will work as normal. The only way I've found to get it out of pass-through for that input is power cycling either the receiver or the sending unit.
Fortunately this can be changed, unfortunately, you absolutely have to have a display hooked up to access the menus to do so.
Overall, the user experience has been underwhelming at best with poor documentation where it exists, an absence of physical documentation, and some terrible choices in terms app dependency. I absolutely hate that I have to use my phone to get access to not just full function but a basic function like being able to pair a bluetooth source to the receiver for playback.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2025
