Customer Ratings & Reviews

Love the sound specially when I watch action movies very much

We upgraded to this receiver from our previous Pioneer. We have been pleased with both.

Have had very good luck with pioneer brand. Would definitely recommend this receiver.

Has turn my living room into a movie theater I love everything about this product

been waiting years for a receiver like this. works great with my bose speakers!

a little difficult to set up, but was able to get it done. it was for lake place for use with new outdoor speakers

So far so good. Only complaint at this point is the fact that you cannot do different things in the different zones.

It’s great product I love it I bought this for my husband he love it

Bought this for $599. Looks, sounds great and has plenty of power.

I feel well-positioned to enjoy the latest technology.

It works fabulous haven’t had any issues worth buying

This receiver is amazing it's a very good buy for anyone

not enough power and no high fidelity controls. Not what I was working for for a stereo receiver

Just installed ready to enjoy all it has to offer.

this thing rocks, pricey but you pay for what get!

Overall good product, highly recommended the receiver.

This is a really nice receiver, very high end. It looks and feels like a top of the line receiver. Right out of the box you will be very happy. It is easy to connect your cables if you know where everything goes. I use banana plugs so i can just plug the speakers right in along with my HDMI cables and optical audio cable. I also plugged my antenna cables and was good to go. Setup can be done manually through the on board display or via the easiest method, via HDMI to the TV. The menus are very easy to follow and in a short few minutes I had the basic features like network and speaker configurations setup. You can then go into some advanced features like hooking up the mic to calibrate the speakers and setting up Dolby Atmos. In less than a half hour I feel I was 100% ready to rock. Home theater on this receiver is excellent. It is easy to use and puts out plenty of power for your speaker setup.It also has the dual source zones where you can setup speakers in another room and feed them a completely separate source from the receiver. You can download a remote control app from Pioneer that is supposed to let you access all of the features of the receiver from you mobile phone. This app falls short along with the network capabilities of the receiver. The network features of this receiver is very frustrating. Sometimes it fails to connect, and when using the app it becomes even more frustrating. When you launch the internet apps, such as Pandora, you have to select a station every single time. In almost any other streaming device I own the app will launch with the last station I played. This allows for a "quick launch" of music, which this does not do. Also, when trying to push music from my phone to the receiver, there is a long delay. This is not a major issue, but a small nuisance rather.n Perhaps the most frustrating thing I noticed when pushing music from my phone, the music will just stop playing for no reason. This is probably the most frustrating thing about the receiver. I love all of the music stored on my phone and this receiver does not make it easy to play it through the network. Overall the receiver is very nice and it puts out so much power with so many features. It decodes Dolby beautifully for movies and cranks out music perfectly. Just be prepared to put up with some annoying issues with it's network connectivity.

Plugged the unit in, it turned off. I decided to get everything else plugged in and set up... then plugged it it and turned it on... turned back off. Trouble shot for 2.5hours and then read the last line on the user manual... if you get a NG warning while running diagnostics immediately unplug and consult your dealer. The good thing is BEST BUY rocks with their return policy and I’m onto a new unit and closer to watching massive movies on my new system!

I have had several Pioneer receivers over the years, and the Elite VSX-LX303 makes many improvements over the Pioneer receivers of the past. The remote, with fewer and larger buttons, is vastly superior to the remote that came with my VSX-1123-K but would be improved with backlighting. It seems that, by 2018, this would be a standard feature among home theater receivers. The front panel has also been simplified, with fewer controls, but still with all the buttons one needs. The on-screen setup program is fantastic. For many years, Pioneer's on-screen program has looked like 1980s Microsoft DOS, so the new look and feel are a dramatic improvement. Finally, Pioneer's remote app, available in the iOS App Store, is very good. It allows control of the vast majority of the receiver's functions via the wifi network, which is very helpful if one is using a second or third zone in a different area of the home such as a patio or basement. This receiver is advertised as a network receiver and boasts Chromecast Built-in, Apple AirPlay, Spotify, Sonos, and several other network services. The problem is that these features are unreliable. I was able to test AirPlay, Spotify, Chromecast, and internet radio. Let's begin with Chromecast. I have several Chromecast Audio devices connected throughout my home, so I am well-versed in their setup and capabilities. I added the receiver to my Google account and attempted to cast from the Pandora app on my iPhone. The front panel display on the receiver shoed connecting for several minutes before the iPhone returned the message "Unable to cast at this time." I then attempted to cast from Pandora to the "Everywhere" group which includes every other Chromecast device in my home without issue. Next, I added the receiver to the everywhere group and attempted to cast to the group. Again, the receiver displayed "Connecting," and after a few minutes, the iPhone returned "Unable to cast at this time." I attempted to use Chromecast throughout several days off and on, with the same results. I also tried using both a wired and wireless network connection in case one method or the other was at fault. Casting from Plex on my iPhone worked a few times, but it wasn't 100% reliable either. I will contact Pioneer support, and if a fix is found, I will post the results here. AirPlay was much more successful than Chromecast, but still not perfect. I was able to stream music from both my phone and my MacBook Pro, but switching the input on the receiver to AirPlay was not always successful on the first try, especially when switching from Chromecast. Spotify worked better than AirPlay or Chromecast, as long as the connection method from iPhone or Mac was set to "Spotify Connect." It even allowed one to control playback initiated from the Mac using the iPhone app and vice-versa. When I attempted to cast from Spotify to the Everywhere Chromecast group, it would not connect with the receiver in the group. As soon as the receiver was removed from the group, Spotify would cast to the group as expected. Internet radio worked precisely as expected. Of course, the primary function of a receiver is to switch sources and amplify sound. This unit does an excellent job of both and offers many inputs allowing a variety of devices to be connected. I won't repeat the technical details available in the item description, but I will emphasize that all the HDMI inputs are HDCP 2.2 compliant and 4K HDR capable. The amplifier section offers plenty of power to drive the connected 5.2.1 speaker system and reproduces deep, powerful bass and crisp, detailed highs. The sound quality and power are just as one would expect from a receiver in this price range. The system uses Pioneer's proprietary MCACC room calibration system. During initial setup, the system prompts for microphone connection, and the microphone is placed on a tripod in the primary seating position. The system then proceeds to play a series of test tones, setting levels and calibrating for distances as needed, as well as correcting for reverb and standing wave. The calibration is a relatively painless process, and great sound is the result. Overall, I am pleased with the sound quality, power, available connections, and basic functionality of the receiver, and very unhappy with the network functions as related to the advertised streaming service integration. I hope that Pioneer will address these issues with a firmware update. Doing so would make this receiver worthy of a 5-star review.

I was in need of replacing an old outdated Yamaha receiver to get back into the modern world of technology and get home theater going again. I have been researching specs and listening to my top picks from Pioneer, Yamaha, Marantz, Denon and Sony for months (without going crazy on cost) and went for the best features, best specs, best value and best bang for the buck. I made several trips to the magnolia room to listen to them all comparing the sound one after the other and although all sounded great to my ears felt the Pioneer Elite and Marantz sounded the best. After having this receiver for a month now and still getting familiar with all it’s settings, options and capabilities, many of which I will not use until later when I upgrade my TV to the full 4K and Dolby Atmos world, I find the Pioneer Elite VSX-LX303 to be a fantastic receiver. Plenty of power to easily handle my old Bose speakers and new Klipsch system alike and they both now sound amazing. The system set-up menu is great and well thought out, remote is laid out nicely without loading up on a ton of small buttons you need a magnifying glass to see lol, MCACC auto calibration with it’s included microphone is excellent with adjusting all speakers and the calibrated distance and volume selected was dead on accurate. The settings of each speaker can then be adjusted to your taste after the fact if necessary and the subwoofer was the only one we dialed up a little to bring more thunder. Right now we have a 1080p tv and no blueray player and use this receiver to watch cable tv and listen to music equally. There are so many great settings to select for both audio and video it is impressive and we have barely touched the surface of the capabilities of this receiver but in time we will. Regular cable tv watching has now become a full surround sound cinema experience daily and we particularly like the Dolby Digital/Surround setting best and just haven’t given the others a real test because of it. Listening to straight music we prefer the Direct/Stereo settings and occasionally the Pure Direct/Stereo to get best realistic sound as intended by the artist without all the special effects. The sound is amazing as is and there is no need to further adjust bass or tremble on this receiver to get better sound as I had to do with my old Yamaha. The network set-up was done in a flash with wi-fi and doing the firmware update only took 8 minutes. We have not used or downloaded any of the internet radio apps yet that are available as our local stations are just fine. This receiver at 100 watts has plenty of power in fact more power then we will ever need to drive my old Bose and new Klipsch speakers alike to house shattering levels but it’s nice to dial it up at least halfway every once in awhile when the wife is not home just to know the power is there. The old Bose never sounded better and new Klipsch are even better yet so old speakers relocated to a secondary room. I was looking to go in the 600-1000 range for a new receiver while patiently watching my selections from several mfrs. Even at 799 this receiver stacks up very well vs. it’s competitors for the price and features. Awhile back this Pioneer Elite VSX-LX303 was on sale briefly from 799 to 449.98 and afterwards I really regretted not pulling the trigger at the time so when the same sale price arrived again I did and am now one happy camper. Moral of my story…at first I was set on getting a Yamaha again but in the back of my mind felt my last one never fully powered my Bose sufficiently and couldn’t fully adjust it to my listening tastes so this time around I would take a better look at others while also not paying full price again either. Glad I did…the Pioneer Elite VSX-LX303 is a outstanding buy for the features, capabilities and overall performance and my only regret now is not getting it sooner. It rates very high at 4.7 vs. others but I give it a solid 5 of 5 and feel you can’t go wrong with it.