Customer Ratings & Reviews

Better remote design 4K upconvert is excellent ATMOS as described

The first receiver I had ever bought was Yamaha and I loved it. That was my first foray into home theater equipment, and I have been hooked ever since. Most of the receiver's I've owned have been Onkyo's and that has usually been because I had been able to find one on sale. Yet I always wanted to go back to Yamaha. I had tried other companies like Onkyo, Pioneer and Denon and even though many of those brands are good I just always wanted to go back. So when I needed to upgrade my receiver I jumped at the chance to upgrade to this Yamaha. This receiver is perfect for all my needs. It has Dolby Vision pass through which my old receiver did not and has plenty of hdmi connections and it also has a couple of pre-outs for the front speakers. If I have one complaint from the receiver is the remote control is not very good. It is humongous and while it does have programmable buttons it is a pain to have to scroll through the inputs when you want to change your input. It is also not a deal breaker but my previous receiver did have a hdmi input on the front which was great if i needed to connect something quickly or temporarily without having to take the whole thing out so i could get to the back of the receiver. Besides those very small flaws everything about the receiver has been great . It sounds amazing and being able to have all the 4k passthrough has made connecting all my devices much easier. If you are looking for a new receiver I highly recommend this one.

flexible enough to accept various components of various age

The setup was a little tricky and time consuming, but in the end it works a good as expected. I just wish that it had a little more volume.

This is my first purchase! I opted for open box !!! Bad mistake ! It said only manual was missing but there were missing parts and the remote doesn't work ! I can only access wey little of its capabilities without the remote and the set up mic !! I think yall should send me this stuff!!!!! Very very bad experience !!!!

works great with our other components and it great to use.

The Yamaha RX-V685BL is quite an upgrade over my previous receiver that is 15 years old and quite limited on features. That being said, it served a basic purpose. There's nothing basic about this Yamaha receiver. First, setup was easy enough and Yamaha makes this easy with their Yamaha Parametric Room Acoustic Optimizer (YPAO) microphone which helps analyze the acoustics of your room and speaker setup and then adjusts the settings to provide optimum listening. For me, I think it did a good job, but I did tweak some of the individual speaker settings to better suit my preferences. Speaking of settings, this receiver has a plethora of settings. I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, but I can see people getting lost in all of the settings. If you're an audiophile, you'll probably love it. Accessing those settings is easy via the on-screen menus. Thank goodness the days of scrolling through vague LED menus via the receiver display. This is made easy by the receiver remote which I find to be quite stylish and modern if not modestly sized. Additionally, you can change settings via the Yamaha MusicCast App. I was very pleased with the MusicCast app as it shows a lot of thought and planning went into its design. This isn't the case in most companion apps so props to Yamaha. So what about sound? The receiver did exactly what it is meant to do which is power whatever speakers you attach to it according to the settings (of which there are many) you select. I found the sound to be excellent and quite an upgrade from my previous lower powered receiver. For those average users, much of your sound quality will depend on your speakers. If you have premium speakers, this receiver will certainly compliment them and make sure that you're getting the most out of your speakers. In conclusion, the Yamaha RX-V685 is an excellent receiver that will compliment your home theater system. Not only will it power your speakers, but it provides an endless amount of options to customize your experience. The app functionality was really a treat for me and I enjoyed being able to stream music directly through the receiver. It's probably more than most will need or use, but you never know. It'll will certainly give you the options to expand and improve your home theater.

Does everything we need need it to do. Great job Geek Squad setup.

The system is great! Works great with all my devices

I've been a Yamaha fan for 20 years and they haven't disappointed me!

Yamaha Audio Does Not Disappoint I've been a fan of Yamaha products ranging from Musical Instruments, Pro Audio (both live and studio), to Consumer Electronics. In my experience, Yamaha products provide a great value across all ranges and have never been disappointed with any of my equipment, so much that I keep on coming back. The Yamaha RX-V685BL is my latest acquisition. I remember being impressed with the smooth, natural, and musical response from my very first Yamaha receiver that I purchased back in 1999. It was a home theater in a box. That receiver has been relegated to garage use, but still works like a champ. I purchased a RX-V673 back 2013 from Best Buy and have been mostly satisfied with it until recently. My Chromecast Ultra and Apple TV 4k have been glitching and have resorted to plugging them directly into my Samsung TV. I reckoned it was time to upgrade and I chose the RX-V685BL. The RX-V673 was my first “Network Receiver” and had some neat features built in like AirPlay, Pandora, and Internet radio playback, but required a hardwired LAN connection or one could do WiFi with an optional adapter. I played around with the network functionality with a wired connection and it was neat, but at the time didn’t have much use for them as I used the receiver only for watching movies and didn’t feel like running a CAT-5 cable or purchase the wireless adapter. It was a great concept at the time and was one of the first, but found it mostly gimmicky for my needs. I later purchased a 1st generation Google Chromecast to serve up my streaming media consumption needs wirelessly. Fast forward to my RX-V685. Thank you Yamaha for including built in wireless networking functionality along with Bluetooth support! I don’t see myself using Bluetooth much as I use my Chromecast and Apple TV streaming devices for music, but it’s certainly a nice feature to have built in. I don’t own any Amazon Alexa products, but I’m glad that Yamaha is making the effort to remain current with smart home automation trends. The RX-V685 continues the legacy of very smooth, natural, and musical response that I’ve come to love. The YPAO auto calibration provides a good baseline to make further tweaks from when tuning your speakers to your room. I still had to adjust rear surround speaker volumes for my listening position. For reference, I’m using Klipsch Quintet 5 IV speakers with a Definitive Technology ProSub 800 subwoofer and I am very pleased with the fast response and immersive sound overall. I’ve seen a lot of reviews griping about the change of remote making it difficult to use in the dark. Let’s be honest, the majority of use for the remote will be to control volume once you have your receiver properly set up. I personally like the single membrane cover for the switches on the remote to prevent dust and gunk intrusion. My suggestion for tuning your receiver would be to do so with some lights on. Set it and forget it and enjoy the great sound (or download and install the companion app if you want to tweak settings in a dark room)!

Item prefect for my home theater. Easy to set up!

I bought this when it was on sale and it works great.

Great receiver and power is just what i needed for my set up.

Easy to set up and hook up for all devices but have issues getting it to always play surroundsound Have to play with the buttons to get it to go to surroundsound for different devices

Yamaha makes a great receiver, and this one has a lot of options

Very good receiver better than dennon receiver that I had

The reciever has a lot of power 150 watt pre channel

Great sound and very easy to install would recomend

Great reciver..wasn't sure which receiver to buy but glad I got this one