Yamaha RX-V681BL Review and Specs

When you decide to upgrade your home theater, what is the reason? Do you have new speakers that require higher input power or do you want to get compatibility with new formats? The Yamaha RX-V681 AV Receiver meets both of these requirements. It supports Dolby Atmos and HDR, two of the latest standards in the home theater market, and also has many other advantages listed in the Yamaha RX-V681BL specs section in our in-depth Yamaha RX-V681BL review.

Yamaha RX-V681BL review

Features

If you try to compare the cheaper model RX-V481 and this V681, then the most noticeable difference between them will be the Dolby Atmos / DTS: X decoder for the older device. In addition, the RX-V481 has five channels of sound amplification, while the RX-V681 has seven, while the power on each of them slightly increased - from 80 to 90 watts (6 ohms). Yamaha MusicCast proprietary technology allows you to access many online music services, as well as play music from portable devices or network drives (with parameters up to 24 bit / 96 kHz), and is also compatible with AirPlay.

Design and build

There are many buttons on the front panel of this unit, but we have no objections, especially since the buttons for directly selecting inputs are also presented here. A large display with a blue glow is easy to read even across the room. The screen graphics in this model almost completely repeats the one that was used in models of past years, with minor cosmetic changes. Menus are now in High Definition resolution, but you still need to get used to the navigation buttons a bit.

Connectivity

The model has increased the number of HDMI connectors, from four to six, all of which support HDCP 2.2 and meet the 2.0 standard. There is also a large number of digital and analog inputs, as well as a Bluetooth receiver and transmitter - the latter allows you to transfer the signal from the receiver to compatible wireless headphones or speakers.

Setup

Setting up the system turned out to be surprisingly simple and the RX-V681 sounded perfectly literally with factory settings. YPAO Volume correction system - natural sound even at low volume.

Pros and Cons