Panasonic SA-BX500

CNET editors' review

Panasonic is hardly the first name we think of when it comes to AV receivers. It's been years since we last saw one, so we weren't sure what to expect from Panasonic's latest entry, the SA-BX500. Depending on your taste, the look is tastefully conservative or just downright boring. The features lineup boasts a few pleasant surprises, but the Panasonic comes up short in some crucial areas: no analog to HDMI video conversion, only three HDMI ports, and no onscreen menu display. Given the BX500's sound quality--it's perfectly good--it could slide by as a decent offering if it was an entry-level $250 receiver. Unfortunately, the MSRP is a whopping $800, with the street price currently hovering between $650 and $700. At any of those prices, there are plenty of competing models from Denon, Onkyo, Sony, and Yamaha (just to name a few) that will deliver many more features--and equal or better sound quality--for a lot less money. Almost any of them would certainly be a better option than this Panasonic.

Design
On the surface, the Panasonic SA-BX500 is fairly similar to any other black box AV receiver. We liked its large, easy-to-read display, and best of all, the Panasonic runs much cooler than average. Even after hours of hard use, it never got even mildly warm to the touch (the rear-mounted cooling fan exhausts warm air). We think the SA-BX500 can be placed within a cabinet with minimal air circulation, and that's rarely the case with today's hot running receivers. The SA-BX-500 is 6.25 inches high, 16.9 wide, 13.4 deep, and weighs just 11 pounds. Both the exceptionally light weight and the cool-running design are due to the BX500's all-digital amplifier.

The small, black plastic remote felt a bit out of place for use with a midprice receiver. It's not backlit, and it looks similar to the remotes Panasonic includes with its budget home-theater-in-a-box (HTIB) systems. (Again: what would've been acceptable in a budget receiver just doesn't cut it for an $800 model.)

Our biggest disappointment with the SA-BX500's design was its lack of onscreen menus. We can live without the fancy graphical user interfaces found on higher-end Denon and Sony receivers, for instance, but the Panasonic's got nothing onscreen. The receiver's front-panel display is a poor substitute and we found the menus rather difficult to navigate. It required way too much time to assign inputs, and access bass and treble controls and features, such as "EQ Adjust," that fine-tune the speaker's treble response to your room's acoustics (with a few preset EQ options). The lack of even basic onscreen menus is unacceptable on a receiver at this price in 2008.

The SA-BX500's auto speaker setup and calibration is easy enough to do, just plug in the supplied microphone and initiate the series of test tones. Unfortunately, we didn't find the results all that accurate, so we had to go through the manual setup routine to correct the subwoofer volume, which was set much too loud, and the bass management/subwoofer crossover was set too high. It was 150 Hertz, but the speakers and subwoofer of our Aperion Intimus 4T Hybrid SD reference system sound much better with the crossover set to 80Hz.

Features
The Panasonic SA-BX500 is a 7x130-watt receiver and features all-digital, cool-running amplifiers. There's a full complement of Dolby and DTS-surround decoding modes, including lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, so it's compatible with anything you can throw at it, including the latest Blu-ray Discs.

The SA-BX500's connectivity is below par; it has just three HDMI 1.3 inputs, three component inputs, and six AV inputs with S-Video (including one on the front panel). But here's the big deal-killer: it doesn't upconvert or upscale analog video sources (composite, S-Video, or component) to HDMI. In fact, it has no upconversion features at all, even between the composite, S-Video, and component connections. In other words, for every type of input you're using on the receiver, you'll need to have a matching output running to your TV. By comparison, nearly all competing receivers at this price range have HDMI upconversion, which allows you to have just a single HDMI cable from the receiver to the TV, regardless of the video source.

Beyond video, it's fairly average as well. There are four digital audio inputs (three optical, one coaxial), but no digital output. A single pair of analog stereo inputs is on board as well. There's also a connection for a dedicated iPod dock (the optional Panasonic SH-PD10). There's 7.1-channel analog inputs for Blu-ray/SACD/DVD-Audio players, but no "pre-out" jacks, nor is there any built-in support for Sirius/XM satellite radio.

The SA-BX500 includes built-in support for wireless rear speakers. Purchase Panasonic's optional SH-FX67 wireless receiver, connect the rear speakers, and you should be good for "wireless" action (as usual, the SH-FX67 still uses wires to send signals to the speakers and must be plugged into an AC power outlet). That said, the wireless system does eliminate the need to run wires from the front of the room (where, presumably, you've placed the SA-BX500) to the surround speakers in the rear.

The receiver can be configured to run separate amps for high- and low-frequency signals for bi-wire-ready front speakers. We've seen this feature before for stereo listening, but the SA-BX500 is the first we've seen to allow bi-amp operation within the context of a 7.1-channel system: it automatically switches its internal circuits to bi-amp when it receives a two-channel signal. If you're running a 5.1 system, the bi-amp feature works all the time. The receiver also has A/B speaker switching, so you can have a second pair of stereo speakers hooked up if you'd like.

The SA-BX500 also offers an intriguing feature referred to as "7.1 channel virtual surround." The idea is great: 7.1-channel surround from a 5.1-channel speaker/subwoofer system. We used Dolby's The Sound of High-Definition Blu-ray to confirm that claim, but could not hear the "phantom" surround channels. The side and rear channels seemed to come from the surround channel speakers that were placed at the four and eight o'clock positions. Also, the system only works with Blu-ray Discs encoded with 7.1-channel soundtracks, which are fairly rare.

Performance
We started our auditions with the War Blu-ray, which does have a 7.1-channel LPCM soundtrack. The film pits Jet Li against tough guy Jason Statham and together they dutifully provide lots of action with big guns and all sorts of carnage, including the automotive kind. When the crashes' and gun fights' dynamic impact came hot and heavy, the SA-BX500 never sounded as if it was working hard. Our reference Aperion Intimus 4T Hybrid SD's five speakers created a seamless, soundfield throughout the CNET listening room. The SA-BX500 sounded fine, but lacked the warmth and ease we heard from the Denon AVR-1909 ($649) receiver.

Next, we popped on Korn's Live at Montreux 2004 Blu-ray. The concert starts with an intense drum solo, and the tom-toms' heavy beats felt nice and solid, and when the rest of the band kicked in, we exercised the SA-BX500's amplifiers to the max. Just as impressive was the way the receiver handled the quieter interludes; the drums' cymbals came across with terrific clarity and detail.

Finishing up with the CD soundtrack to the film Birth, the SA-BX500's stereo imaging was good enough that we didn't miss surround sound. The orchestral score sounded rich, without a hint of dryness we sometimes hear from digital amplifiers.

In other words, there was little to complain about--and a lot to like--about the sound quality from the Panasonic SA-BX500. But its lackluster connectivity and features--and the fact that the auto-speaker calibration and virtual-surround functions don't work as advertised--make this one a pass.