Customer Ratings & Reviews

I bought this primarily for the wifi and hard wired. It consistently drops and I have to unplug to reset.

I had to return because it was hard to install....

For starters I had a home theater receiver go out recently. A Yamaha that I had owned for 7+ years. Wow how spoiled we get. Researched ensued and I had it down to a couple of Yamaha and the Pioneer Elite models. 7.1 and 7.2 are nice, but I only needed 5.1. I get Bluetooth, Web enabled, HDMI 4K, a pretty decent app that can control my device? Good bye remote! Awesome value and was fortunate to get it on sale.

BB would not exchange only repair item that geek squad opened and found defective, so they gave me store credit instead or had option to exchange and add $200 to get similar receiver. I had a two year warranty on pioneer too. Ended up with a cheap receiver plus paid additional $40. So much for warranties!

Box this as open box at great price. Box looked great it looked like new but I got no sound out of my speakers. I got test tones during initial set up but this was a brick. Returned for full refund.

Purchased this receiver to pair with my Def-Tech Procinema 600. It powers the speakers without any issue, and sounds great at all listening levels. When I first set it up, I was having issues connecting to the internet. Called Pioneers customer service, after an hour it was determined that the unit was defective. They told me to get a replacement from Best Buy. After doing so, I brought the new one home, set it back up, and this one has the same problems, along with freezing menu screens, and loss of video. After searching some forums, it seems to be an on going issue with the VSX line. I really want to like this receiver more, just wish the bugs could be worked out.

This receiver does it all. Purchased a new 4k television and wanted a receiver to go with it. I am not a techie - had a friend who is help set it up. It was more work than I expected to set up. I could not be happier with the results. Very clear. All the power I need. I am only pushing 6 ohm speakers. Love the sound!

This unit sounds powerfule especially the bass. The mids are warm and cuts through. I have decent wxperience with Pioneer receivers and I can say they are easy to setup. The weak point of these models are the remote control. They are best controlled through iControlAV5 application

Really didn't get to try it bought open box came in broken and no remote

I purchased thisly at BB at a great price. it worked spectacularly and was a very easy set up. Then 3 months later. .. it would decide to freeze. Getting support from pioneer is not the best. I think you have the same chance of reaching a person as becoming Pope. Not only do you get a hold, but you get a reminder every 30 seconds from a woman with a really annoying new jersey accent. "thank you for CAWLING" We will see if we get results. I have always had great service with pioneer elite and never had a problem. The unit has great sound and connectivity. The interface is not the best but it is manageable. Let's see if anyone fixes it. It totally freezes up and cant change volume, etc.

I was excited to see a Pioneer Elite receiver on-sale for $299 at my local store, and I was needing a receiver with additional HDMI inputs. I was impressed with the feature-set at that price. Overall, it's a good sounding receiver with plenty of clean power to drive speakers. That is what is preventing this from being a 2-star product. The video processing is what drove me away from this product. I have 4 game consoles, Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One and a PS4. When I attached them to this reciever, I had to change the HDMI color space on all 4 devices to RGB to get proper black levels on my Panasonic UT60 plasma. This is not normal, because I plug the devices directly into the panel, I do not have to do this. Therefore, the Pioneer is doing some form of video processing on the HDMI inputs that it should not be doing. I was not able to find a bypass to fix this problem. Having said that, if this receiver did have a bypass option for the video processing, I would've kept it instead of returning it for a Yamaha RX-V479.

Bought this receiver to replace Pioneer VSX-823 when the main board went out on me. Have always liked Pioneer receivers and decided to stay with that brand. My only disappointment was with the remove control. While I can use it on my Panasonic TV, it will not control any other components other than Pioneer. Fortunately the remove from my old receiver works with my new receiver and I can use it on my blue ray DVD player and cable box. Internet Radio is a very nice feature. Overall very pleased with this receiver..

When I moved into my new place, the previous tenant had surround sound speakers hard wired into the house. I searched google up and down how to get the sound from my 47" LG tv to those speakers since I'm a total beginner. Well, if you have basic common sense, hooking up this receiver is so simple. took me about 30 minutes from opening the box to doing final touches on tuning, taking my time. this receiver is just great all around, it's heavy (solid) the two big knobs on the front have great resistance, they're quiet and slow to turn. you can customize the labels displayed on the unit and it also has a dimmer button on the remote so when you watch a movie in the dark it doesn't light up the whole room. I highly recommend this because everything just works the way it should and hasn't failed at all. im a 27 year old dude in California that prefers quality. people, you don't need to keep looking around, this is the receiver you want.

Great sound . But a little slow with Internet. DO NOT USE THE APP FOR THIS RECEIVER IT IS GARBAGE. That is what lowered my rating for this review handles klipcsh speakers well

Purchased this receiver to compliment my bedroom setup - Sony XBR 55X800B 4k TV, Definitive Technology ProCinema 800 speaker system and Pioneer DT210 Blu-ray player. My old Denon receiver had issues auto-switching audio decoding formats so thought I'd try a new receiver. Very pleased with the unit. In this small environment the receiver easily handles the ProCinema 800s, and the vocal localization is excellent. Wireless networking makes firmware updating a snap. 3 way binding posts made hooking up the speakers a breeze (I used banana plugs#. Lots of HDMIs and one is an ARC channel. Hard to go wrong with this unit given the right environment #i.e., not a huge den or living room).

Pioneer Elite would have been a recommended brand should someone had asked me to list of a few names of note for a pending receiver purchase. They still might be, but not this model. I have 3 reasons for this and I'll try to be brief. My first big issue with the VSX-45 is it's inability to store a DSP request into an input. I want to be able to set defaults for each input I use. You cannot do that with this receiver. Nor did a popular default get chosen by Pioneer, e.g.: Dolby Pro Logic IIx or DTS Neo 6. These would be reasonable for a 5.1 system as it would give the listener a 5.1 experience with any standard 2.0 input signal (common still even on HD programming from networks) and obviously defaults for older technologies. No, not the VSX-45. The default is Ext. Stereo which is basically each left/right pair in stereo and the center in a mono of some kind. Makes everything loud and gives no accuracy to the sound stage. Remember, this isn't a stereo or quad receiver--it is a 5.1 receiver. I could go on, but suffice-it-to-say, having to explain to "non-technical" users that the "Auto Surround" button will have to be pressed until you see Dolby and hear main sounds from the center channel is NOT something they response well to. What REALLY gets me is that it does this for ANY input signal! Even discrete Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 Surround signals. I seriously am at a loss. Most of my star reductions have to do with this. My other complaints are smaller, but are weaknesses; so I shall list them. Second on my list is the receiver's purposeful cut-off of audio on the "Monitor-Out" output. Now, I've been telling people to keep their TV volume off while listening to surround sound for years. However, I believe the manufacturer should let the audio pass for a few reasons. My particular situation is one of those. I have an HDMI splitter connected to the output and one feed goes to the main monitor and the second to a TV in another room so it can view whatever the main room views. No audio pass-through negates my ability to hear audio on the 2nd television. Everything "hand-shakes" but no audio is present. In reading the manual, this is a deliberate omission or restriction (better word) enabled by Pioneer. Perhaps a user will need the audio for some other reason. Maybe the speakers are malfunctioning and the TV audio will be needed. Maybe it will be needed for troubleshooting purposes. There is no reason to deny its pass-through. Apparently, Pioneer disagreed. My final complaint with this receiver is its UI, or User Interface. The UI is horrid. I have an Integra 7.8 (2008) receiver--admittedly in a higher price class--that has significantly better UI than this with the ability to do the things I mentioned above that this receiver won't do. I mention this because the VSX-45 just cannot get out of its own way. Manufacturers are in this war to throw as many Logos and features (WiFi, Bluetooth, Spotify, etc.) on their boxes and on the front-face of the receiver to grab attention (and I get this) but the internals and common-sense have gone out the window. Trying to program the WiFi passcode into the VSX-45 took 10 minutes continuously scrolling through the entire ASCII code (100+ numbers, lettters, symbols, etc.) for each character in the pass key and at the end, none of it worked. It wouldn't connect. This is so easy, any cheap device can do this easily and with a better UI. Pioneer fails here miserably. I haven't bothered to try the calibration. In my experience, the results should make an improvement to the sound---I've programmed receivers of every brand for years---no matter what you buy--make sure you do this. Sadly, I cannot recommend this receiver. Mine will be returned.

I bought this to replace my old Onkyo. This is a solid piece of hardware I am pushing 5 Klipsch Synergy speakers in full 5.1 surround and it sounds completely different than the Onkyo did. The sound separation is fantastic. This think sets it self up with just a few clicks. The only hard part is the speaker wire and if that bother you buy Banana Plugs and the problem goes away. I am not sure I would have bought this for $499. I most likely would have gone with the Marantz. But if you find it on sale by all means pick one up.

Love the quality of Pioneer, great back up unit for the home theater

Hit and miss. Been repaired twice.. not that stable overall

Super satisfied with my purchase I glad I did no bad issues