Sony STR-DN850 7.2 Channel 4K AV Receiver (Built-in Wi-fi & Bluetooth)

This item was bought to replace a 25 year old unit. The airplay function was a primary selling point for me. At the price point this seemed like a great deal. For all of the features, compared to other similar units, the price was awesome. It came with some nice features that I wasn't really looking for but are working nice, like the internet radio accessibility. Listening to Pandora on it (not airplay, direct) has been awesome. I just wish their Sony app had a little better control & interface. The networking options are nice; wifi or direct ethernet. Everything hooks up easy; instructions are easy to follow; the calibration system is nice. The sound is great. A desktop app (Mac) would be nice too, but too many products are skipping that these days and doing only mobile. The Airplay functionality mostly makes up for lack of a desktop app. Using Airplay from iTunes to the Sony is awesome.

This thing is so advanced, I'm not sure I know what I'm doing, so I may have missed something that this review gets wrong. First: the good: I love all the connections on the back. I really like how it looks. It's easy to set up and works nicely with my harmony one remote. The auto room adjustment feature is simple to use and works well. The bad: Some complaints I have are: I feel like you don't have enough control over the sound. It has like 20 pre-set modes (which Sony calls "sound fields" (concert, 2-speaker stereo, studio, movie, etc.) and they are probably adequate, but sometimes I want to tweak the sound a little. The only equalizers are treble and bass on each speaker. There is no control for the subwoofer independently. My outgoing receiver had that and I used it a lot. Now I have to manually turn the subwoofer up and down. There's no overall equalizer, either. Having said all that, it sounds really good on my relatively cheap speakers. I have found myself defaulting to the PLII modes. When trying to use the Apple Airplay, the music halted and jerked a lot. Same with playing over Bluetooth from my droid phone. The DNLA worked smoothly, though. I'm not sure what the cause of the halting is. It may be outside the receiver. I was disappointed that the only music services available are Pandora and radio stations that stream over the internet. Spotify only works if you have premium service and you have to connect using your phone. Overall: The main reason I bought it was sound quality when watching movies and listening to music I already own, and secondarily to listen to Pandora. I'm very happy with those functions (with the exception of my sense that I'm not in complete control). I also wanted to allow my family to connect with their phones, but that feature doesn't work very well for me because of the halting.

This receiver replaced a Sony STR-DE998 in my home theater setup. Aside from other features, I am astonished at the improvement in audio quality! Setup was easy with the included microphone and everything went very smoothly. Dialog was always muddy with previous receivers, but the center channel is clear and crisp now, so my wife will be happy that we are not cranking the volume in order to hear the dialog better. Is it the result of an entirely HDMI setup? I don't know but I'm thrilled and really glad to be rid of the tangled mix of HDMI, optical, digital coax, and Component cables of the past and the complex receiver setup required to make it all work. The STR-DN850 setup is easy! You do need to hook it up to your TV or projector to set it up since everything is through the video interface. Welcome to the future. Something that my family is going to LOVE is the Airplay functionality of this receiver. We have zoned Airplay audio throughout the rest of the house but not in the basement where the home theater is setup. When entertaining we used to have music playing everywhere except where the darts and foosball table are setup. With this receiver, we can Airplay to the basement and it sounds amazing (it should, it has the best speakers in the house). I played darts with my son last night and we listened to music and it was awesome. Airplay will even wake the receiver from sleep so it's as easy as selecting it in Airplay on your iPhone and playing some music. At long last, the entire home has music! The remote with this receiver is extremely simple but it does the job to get things setup just fine. I use a Harmony Ultimate remote to control the theater setup so the Sony remote will go in the drawer with the rest of the remotes just like previous receiver remotes did. If you have a completely HDMI-based system this receiver is awesome and should work very well for you. If you have any Component video sources you may need to go to the 1050. Our only Component source was the Wii that still occasionally gets used but I ordered a Wii HDMI adapter and it works great. I'm very happy with this purchase. I purchased from Amazon Warehouse Deals and cannot believe what a bargain it was. Most radical improvement to my theater since I set it up 10 years ago. UPDATE JUNE 19, 2016: After six months of what I would consider light use, there is no signal from the HDMI. I called Sony customer service and they had me do a factory reset which fixed the problem, but I had to setup everything again. UPDATE December 27, 2016: It happened again, there was no signal from the HDMI. I did a factory reset and it works again. So it appears that every 6 months I need to do a factory reset and then setup the receiver all over again. I think I will look for a replacement.

This receiver does exactly what I want it to. I bought this Sony to replace another nearly 20 year old Sony receiver that performed like a champ. This had all the modern AV features I wanted including built-in Wi-Fi, lots of HDMI inputs, speaker auto-calibration, and the ability to wirelessly play all the music stored on my computer (getting my computer set up correctly for the Sony to access those files has been a different story, but I finally got it). I've had the chance to crank it up about as high as my ears will tolerate, and the sound is clear and crisp. I have a 5.1 setup in a relatively small living room, and this Sony is plenty powerful for this configuration. The front styling is elegant and functional, the remote is a haven of simplicity after the remote on my old Sony, and the onscreen display is intuitive and easy to use. As a person who appreciates good audio quality in music and movies while not considering myself an audiophile snob, this Sony receiver is a winner.

This AVR is excellent. I have been using Sony AVR since 2003 and upgraded to the STR - DN 850 from STR -DE697. I really upgraded for the HDMI input capability. However I was extremely please with ease of set up and GUI.The sound clarity is superb and the wi-fi , bluetooth, NFC connectivity all work great. I would recommend this AVR.... *Edit* The HDMI pass through output suddenly refused to work on auto.. kept shutting off within minutes. Had to set "on" to get sustained viewing. Will check/change cables and see if that is the problem.. Really like this AVR .. would hate to have to return it. *Edit* 28/4/15 - The cables were the problem. Changed those and all is well again

Oh Sony why hast though forsaken your base? Let us do a bit of consumer math shall we: 50/50 or 1 in 2 chance of getting a rotten apple. Those are the same odds as flipping a coin - roughly and statistically speaking. This will be the 6th or 7th installment of my anguish over paying for something, receiving it in near DOA fashion, and doing the Amazon return dance. I am so good at returns that I may as well open a returns-based shop; and do it for everyone else. Buying this Sony was no different than flipping a coin in regards to DOA status. Yes it worked. It turned on and setup almost effortlessly. I really like the onscreen interface but there was a huge lacking of info and control between that and the front panel display – the panel display is almost useless. No updates were available after the arduously long wait to connect to my network; the handshake took five minutes. After watching one movie on Blue Ray and several streaming attempts, the Sony became plagued with flashes of digital white screens with tiny pixelated blocks. If one was not paying attention one might have missed the first couple, but after an hour I counted 36. Then it started to flash black screen during the same media session. All of that occurred within three hours of opening the box and setting it up. This unit was brand new. How about the sound quality? Compared to my Harman/Kardon receiver the sound was very tight and clear but lacked a kind of depth. It was very close to the Pioneer sound. I adjusted the bass and treble on the Sony to get some of that heft back – it worked. The most obvious difference between this unit’s sound and that of Pioneer Theater, Harman/Kardon and Cambridge audio was the headphone output sound quality; it was the worst of the bunch being standard stereo output with no adjustments available but volume – WHAT? No two channel DTS? SONY DESIGNED DTS-WHAT THE_FUN? How could they not include that standard on all of their units? Harman sound being absolutely pristine and spacious, and Cambridge right behind it in joy, Sony floundered here also giving me a headache within 30 minutes of easy listening – just like Pioneer... I used a pair of Sennheiser HD 380 phones to test them all. Now to the point of all of this: I have become soured on the unethical concept of hiding behind corporate names in order to dupe - YES DUPE - the middle class buyer out of their very hard won, and ever dwindling cash. In case you all have not been paying attention, the average wage in America is stagnant and has been for so long I can't recall the last time a working stiff was paid a living wage. There are plenty of cheap jobs -and lay-offs... Get a job... get laid off, and so on, and so on. What that means to my checkbook is that I use cash only. When I make a purchase I must do a great deal of research first, save cash, and then buy. The problem I am now wrestling with is this: Unfortunately I can no longer depend on the so called reviews here on Amazon. They are plagued with nonsense and paid reviews from “people” who turn around and sell the junk they review. If they sell it how can they review it positively? What have they invested if they are given the product? Easily won equals easily irrelevant. So far JBL, Planar, Roland and Korg, have been the only names I can buy from witch work right out of the box as advertised every time. Now you may notice that three of those names are related to musical instruments and sound production. That is because they make professional gear at good prices given their reliability. For instance, all of my speakers, both studio and theater, are JBL systems, self-powered and passive. No other speaker has outlasted the demands I put upon sound. However, I purchased a Yamaha mixer of the new XU series and within a month the USB board and power supply to the unit had failed. It literally popped. It took three months to get it fixed and when I got it back the soft off/on was ruined. I have been through FIVE blue ray orders from 2014 to now, from Sony, Panasonic and LG. All of them failed to work as advertised and in fact they all, at some point in the first day of use, refused to turn on or off without unplugging them. The LG popped – literally again - and never came back to life. I recently purchased a USB 3.0 hub and when I plugged it into my mother board, it tripped my overload protection and when my computer came back up all of my USB ports and hubs became useless. It killed my MB! I have had enough.

. I bought this Sony Receiver to replace a much older Pioneer that was almost top of the line, ten years ago. It still played well, but was lacking many of todays sound options I wanted to complement a 4K big screen set. The Sony arrive well packaged, and was very easy to remove and begin to set up. Once my 7.1 surround speakers were wired, the DCAC was a joy to use. It perfectly measured the distance between speakers in the room, and the sound is just amazing. I have two Bose 901 for my right and left front speakers, two Bose 301 speakers for my surround right and left, and two smaller Sony speakers for the surround back speakers, and a Sony Sub woofer. This receiver makes each speaker sound like a million dollars, you will feel like you are sitting in the theater watching movies or regular Cable shows. Amazon Prime and Netflix stream perfectly with the 4K pass through. This is a real bargain at $298. The only negative is really not, but the online manual is over 300 pages, and I still have a lot to learn to use all the features. My Samsung Galaxy 6 was a breeze to synch, the Wi-Fi and blue tooth are easy to use. OK, this is a second update. The 4K HDMI output started working again after a power outage reset the unit. So far so good, only issue now is that when I watch a movie like Deep Water Horizon, the deep, rumbling bass will cause the usit to switch off in protective mode. Not the super fantastic unit I had at first, but a good unit when it works.

If this receiver didn't fail on me already, I probably would have given it 5 stars. Set up was easy and sound WAS great for my ears. Has a ton of features that I probably wouldn't use but its nice to have them. Unfortunately after owning this receiver for less that two months the HDMI-out output has mysteriously quit working. My speakers aren't even broken in yet! If it works, its great but mine doesn't so two stars. Update 13 June 2015 Sony support contacted me and sent me instructions on how to fix my problem. 2 minutes later my unit is working again! Thanks for the great customer service Sony! So yeah I gove it 5 stars.

Great product. Easy to used with literature. Good value.

Love the Receiver. Hate the documentation. If you buy this and are having trouble getting any kind of response from your Sub-woofer, try turning on Auto volume in Audio Settings. After days of research I had set up the sub to allow the Receiver to control the Low Pass filter and changed my speaker size to small, which allowed the change of the frequency filter for the speakers to be changed to 90. None of this really helped. I had given up and was fiddling with other settings when I thought it would be nice if the volume for commercials was automatically lowered to match the volume of the show I was watching. I turned on auto volume and boom. Having gone through all of that I turned to the equalizer and turned the bass up on all the speakers. I originally didn't think this would help as I thought to myself "I don't want the bass coming from my tiny speakers, which aren't built for bass. I want it to come from my Sub-woofer" Well, after my research and fiddling around I realized that turning the bass up on the speakers actually affects the sub. Lesson learned. Hopefully, that helps someone. One thing I haven't figured out yet and I don't know if it is a problem with the Receiver (bug or by design) or the Playstation 3, but I have connected my Playstation 3 to it via HDMI and I get sound but no picture. My XBOX 360 and XBOX ONE and Computer all work fine - Playstation (Which is SONY) not so much.