Onkyo's TX-NR535 offers home theater thrills on the cheap

[MUSIC] If you're looking to upgrade your home theater sound then you could buy a Sound Bar. They're easy to install and sound pretty good. But they are limited in their upgradability. Install a navy receiver though and your options really open up. Hi. I'm Ty Pendlebury and at $400, the Onkyo TX-NR535 is in the sweet spot of performance features and price. It offers a lot of different features, including HDMI 2.0 slots that feature compatibility as well as a Bluetooth receiver. This is a wireless device and so it also includes hi-res file playback from your network, as well as Spotify and Pandora. The build quality is pretty good but the remote control is needlessly cluttered and the user interface belongs in the 1980s. Sound quality is pretty decent and it's best suited to home cinema. Particularly as it comes with not one but two subwoofer outputs in addition to the five surround sounds. It's not a musical device, though, and can sound harsh with rock music and especially anything streamed via Bluetooth. The Onkyo TXNR535 is nonetheless a capable receiver with some good features. But mobiles like the [UNKNOWN] 1403 and the Sony FDRDN 1050 offer better performance for about the same money. This has been Ty [UNKNOWN] for cnet.com [MUSIC]