DENON AVR-X2500H

As the Awards logo above indicates, Denon’s $1599 AVR-X2500H took out our Sound+Image Award this year as AV Receiver of the Year $1000- $2000. So clearly we think it’s as fine a performer and as loaded with features as you could possibly hope for at this level of price. Let’s find out why.

EQUIPMENT

The term ‘AV receiver’ is woefully indadequate these days - there’s rather more going on here than radio-plus-amplifiers. Those fundamentals are here, though; the Denon still has AM and FM radio tuners (and internet radio, once we get networking). As for amplifiers, not so long ago you’d have got five amplifiers in a receiver at this price; the AVR-X2500H has seven of them, and each rated at 95 watts into 8 ohms, two channels driven, across the full audio bandwidth at inaudibly low levels of distortion. (Which means well-specified, believable watts.)

So you could run a 7.1-channel system