Customer Ratings & Reviews

Bluetooth didn't work. Brought it back. The salesman wasn't very helpful.

This is rather plain & basic looking when you look at the front of it but it does have a lot of options for connections. There are 4 HDMI inputs of which I haven’t used yet because I want this more for just listening to music. There are analog, coaxial, Bluetooth, two RCA inputs, optical input. I have an old iPod connected through Bluetooth, which was a little tricky at first to figure out, you have to set it by holding the input knob. I also have an echo dot connected through analog and a CD player connected through analog. Remote is included. Setup was fairly easy , there’s also an app that you can download. I like this a lot & it is replacing an old head unit I had with overheating issues, so far so good with this one. I have it paired with a JBL subwoofer and JBL speakers. My only complaint is that there are no directions on hooking up, no labeled inputs for speakers and instead of surround sound this just seems to be just a stereo. Aside of the no directions it’s a nice receiver with many features.

Would not fit into stereo cabinet. Realized too late about reviews not being overly positive. Bought a Yamaha instead.

This receiver is a great price for the cash strap buyer! I really love how this receiver takes me back to the days when I was a child, listening to music with my mom as we either clean the house, was just enjoying the music and the good days! I really love the old-school look up of this, with the modern updates! My recommendation would be, that if you can afford MA 9100, you definitely should get that instead of this one! But for the cash app people like myself, you can't go wrong with this receiver either. This receiver is perfect for my room in the basement, where my game system is located. I hooked up all three of my game systems and DVD player to my HDMI's in the back of the receiver and connected all the speakers that I had, and turned everything on. After setting everything up on my TV that I needed to do, and also adjusting all the sounds from everything that I played, I can honestly say I'm amazed! I really don't have the type of premium speakers that JBL makes, but if these speakers sound this good, I can imagine how good the higher end set up is! Everything that's on my shelf, looks like it's supposed to be there and made for that exact set up! I'm now looking to purchase some of the higher end speakers that's made by JL on the Best Buy website, and I believe that I am now a fan of JBL again!

The look of the receiver is great, and it can handle most the common connections, but it is clearly an entry-level receiver, based on lack of a network connection for streaming and firmware updates. It does have bluetooth, but I do not use it much for that. The set up is not intuitive, the manual could be more helpful, and the settings menu is nothing short of disgraceful. The menu was not designed to be entry-level user friendly. After plodding my way through the menus to change settings from defaults, I finally had it where I wanted it about two hours later which is way too long in 2024. I cannot believe they do not have an app that supports this receiver like the higher end models. This cannot be a substantial cost to add at manufacture, but it would make it much more user-friendly. I will say that once I got it set, it produces great sound when matched up with the bookshelf 2.1 speakers and a sub. When hooked up to larger existing speakers, I was not impressed, but it matches up very well with the JBL bookshelf and sub. This set appears to be best suited to small spaces, so if you have a big room to fill, perhaps look toward the higher end systems. If you are looking for a nice system that works well together and don't mind the menu settings to initially set it up, I can recommend it.

Overall I’m happy with this receiver for a simple (and tiny) home AV setup. I’m using it only with two bookshelf speakers and a subwoofer for now. I may build out my system to a 5.2, but if I do, it would be down the road. For now I'm happy with this 2.1 setup, especially because my room is quite small. I found it easy to set up, although calibration will be a bit more involved because I don’t have an iPhone (more on that in a bit). It has all the HDMI ports I need (I’m using three out of the four), plus Bluetooth pairing. The interface is very minimalist. I’m a bit conflicted about how simplified it is. On the one hand, it looks very clean; on the other, having the input selection hidden within the left dial does require just a bit more attention than having input selector buttons. Calibrating the equalizer with the app-based EZ Set EQ is supposed to be easy right out of the box, but only if you have an iPhone. I don’t, so it’s not something I was able to do upon initial set-up. JBL can’t make an app to account for all of the potential Android phones and hardware variants out there like they can for the relatively narrow range of Apple iPhones, so they actually specify a particular mic (Dayton Audio iMM-6C), that I need to buy in order to perform the calibration, which means additional expense. I’ll eventually get it, but I don’t have the motivation to spend another $40 right now just to calibrate my setup to my room. For TV, movies, and console gaming, this lack of calibration doesn’t bother me so much. Even with zero adjustment to the bookshelf speaker levels and only very crude dialing in of the subwoofer crossover and volume, it’s a VAST improvement on my TV’s built-in speakers. For music, it’s a different story. I don’t know if the EZ Set EQ will provide more adjustment than the super basic treble and bass sliders that are available for manual adjustment, but no matter how I tried to tune these two sliders, the output isn’t better than what I can get out of my Google Nest Audio smart speaker. It's possible that the speakers are the limitation (though it would surprise me). For now, I’m fine with it because the main purpose for the receiver was for TV, movies, and gaming anyway, and for those uses, I'm very happy with it. I just hope the EZ Set will dial in something better than I can do myself for music.