Sony STR-DH810

Sony STR-DH810 review

Were you to catch the prime movers and shakers at Sony at an unguarded moment or ply them with drink, many would admit that, until comparatively recently, the company was going through a dull patch lasting some years. There was nothing wrong with what they made, but somehow many of their mainstream products lacked the pizzazz historically associated with the brand. Denon and Yamaha seemed more on the ball with technical (and sometimes also sonic) innovation and, more recently, Onkyo has stolen a march on most others with their combination of technical wizardry and impressively low prices. But Sony appears to be fighting back. Okay, so the STR-DH810 obeys all the usual clich's of mainstream receiver design. That is to say it looks boring, and lacks personality – if you removed the Sony badge, there would be no way of identifying where it came from. Even Sony can only find one thing of interest to say about its receiver's front fascia: that it employs a new 10-digit dot matrix for a sharp and clear display.