Customer Ratings & Reviews

Receiver not working had reset it a few times and not working

Sent without a remote and it for not power on..customer service was not helpful

Item stopped outputting video less than 20 days after purchase.

It was defective. Also much less from manufacturer and Best Buy won’t match manufacturers price.

Works great/7.2 for $299 Fantastic/ Easy set up! What a sale!!

Well packaged. Easy installation. Hook up to bose acoustimass 16 surround system. Sounds great. This replaced Onkyo older model. Like the sound. Powerful in the price range.

This receiver was installed by Geek Squad 2 weeks ago. So far, so good. I bought this receiver to replace our 2012 Onkyo TX SR 313, only because the picture pass through module went out in the old unit. Although it's a 7.2 channel, I'm only using 5.1, but at $329 on sale, It was a great deal for a trusted brand.

Really good sound really good price for an entry starter system

Unit was sold as "open box in excellent condition" and was supposed to be "fully working as originally intended". However, this Unit would not turn on fully and was throwing an error code for faulty circuitry right out of the box. Had to return for a refund as it would not work as intended. Beware purchasing this item as open box, the error code this was throwing is a known issue with this particular model number and it places the unit into a lockdown protection mode that can not be cleared upon unplugging or plugging in to boot or reboot. Delving into the reviews on BEST BUY's website, it seems others have purchased open boxed units of this model number and experienced the exact same problem. Further research online shows this is a widely known problem with this specific model number and brand, likely a manufacturing flaw with these units from the factory or from previously being mishandled by the initial purchaser before they were returned and then re-sold as open box (i.e. original purchaser stripping wires over the top of the unit could have caused multiple tiny copper wire strands to fall down inside the unit and short out circuitry upon its first boot up sequence, permanently damaging circuitry) at which point the original customer returned the item to best Buy as faulty. They then packaged and re-sold it as open box without properly checking that the unit was fully functional. Stripping wires over the top of the unit seems to be a fairly common mistake people make upon first time set up. ALWAYS strip your speaker wires somewhere FAR AWAY from your unit and twist any loose strands off before bringing the wires anywhere near the unit to hook them up. There are ventilation holes in the top and sides and this can and will damage your unit either immediately or sometime down the line.

great surround sound and ease of changing from DVD to TV to Apple TV to Apps.

Works awesome Great Product Recomend This Receiver

Very clear audio nice quality build and it really makes my sub sound very different from other recievers it sounds way more vibrant than my previous reciever. Overall worth every penny

Excellent product; easy to install, easy to use Receiver.

In shopping for receivers under $500 I found that most didn't have enough power or they were not designed to power 4 ohm speakers. This unit worked great for my needs.

I’m very excited love it easy to use I will buy it again

My stereo never sounded so good love the dolby atmos and the bass is crazy

This receiver is a piece of garbage. Literally. I threw mine in the trash. I bought this unit from a reputable stereo equipment dealer (not Best Buy). I paid $349 for this on sale. I was aware that this was an entry level surround sound amp, but it was trouble from the start. It would randomly shut off. Sometimes it would click loudly as if it were going to shut down, but then it wouldn’t. This is terribly distracting when you’re watching a movie. It is virtually impossible to download software updates as it doesn’t connect to the internet. You are expected to download updates to a flash drive and plug it into the unit to update software. Ridiculous in this day and age, but I figured it’ll do for a bit with the existing software until i can upgrade to something more advanced in the future. After 5 months the unit shut down altogether one day and wouldn’t start again. It felt really hot and I assumed it had shut down as a safety precaution despite the fact that I hadn’t pushed it particularly hard. I finally managed to restart it long enough to get an error code that essentially said something in the unit had fried. I contacted Onkyo and they told me they’d repair it under warranty, but that I’d have to pay shipping to do so. I went back and forth with them via email for a week, but they refused to replace or refund. I couldn’t even get them to cover shipping costs to send their faulty unit out. After reading countless reviews regarding this receiver, it appears that many people have had exactly the same experience with the unit and the company. Some people paid to send theirs out, only to have it returned with the diagnosis of nothing found wrong. Others put their newly repaired unit back into service, only to have it do the same thing again. I refuse to incur the cost of repair only to find myself in the same situation down the road, so I’m out of luck. Onkyo’s customer service leaves a lot to be desired and frankly, this receiver sounds mediocre to begin with, so I learned an expensive lesson here. I’m writing this review in hopes that I can save others from having a similar experience. Have a look at the dozens of negative reviews on Amazon, all with the same symptoms and customer service experiences. Onkyo knows this unit is junk but they won’t stop selling it, nor will they do the right thing by their customers. I will never buy anything from this company again after this. Shame on you Onkyo! You are unapologetic crooks.

Easy to install. Simple connections? Great dynamic sound production.

The TX-SR494 is mostly as described. One of the negative points is that the advertisement described the unit as having a pass through when in stand-by mode which is not true. If I had known the truth, I would not have purchased this unit.

This is ok but not as good as the one that are replaying. Need more connections.