Customer Reviews

Harman Kardon AVR 645 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver with 2 HDMI Inputs

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

My DPR 2005 had issues and I sent it in for warranty service. Harmans warranty department is great, and I was able to trade out my DPR for the new AVR 645, which retails $500 less then the DPR and outputs less power, but has more modern features such as "The Bridge", XM, USB, and HDMI connections. I am dissapointed to say that this unit does not have the EZset feature on the remote control anymore. God knows why as this feature was rated great! Now you have to run the provided mic and cord to the unit for setup, perhaps it works better this way and offers a more accurate EQ curve, I dont know.

Sound Quality- Well to be honest, the speakers I have are nothing great, but sound quality and loudness actually seem better then with the DPR unit. Distortion is hard to judge since my speakers are of low quality. This unit seems to seperate channels a little better for nicer imaging of the sound. Cranked up really pushes my speakers a lot more then the DPR unit. On this unit see no adjustments for speaker impedence as my DPR had, but judging from the sound it doesnt seem to matter.

Fit and Finish- same as any other harman unit. They look excellent, connections on the panels are plentiful and connect securely. A downside I noticed... The classic HK feature, the blue-lit volume dial... well the center blacked out plastic on the dial isn't blacked out enough and you can see the 4 led's behind the plastic on this unit which takes away from the nice blue glow your suppose to see on the perimeter of the dial.

Zone II Remote- Thankfully the Zone II remote control has been updated and looks about 20x better. It is gray and matches the other remotes color, it offers more control, and looks much nicer.

Features- This unit is loaded with just about every input connection you could ask for and has all the DTS, Digital EX, Prologic II and IIX, Dolby headphone, etc.... however for about 1/3 the price so does many other brand units out there. Harman does have the proprietary LOGIC 7 which I'll admit is a processing I choose most often and like, and the unit looks much better then most other units out there and does offer some video scaling... but heres my problem..

DOWNSIDES OF A HARMAN KARDON:

Price but more importantly... HARMANS seems to have some build issues. I see post after post of problems with units not working correctly. I am paying around 600 more for Harman that outputs less power then other brands(or maybe other manufacturers just dont list actual), has no more features then other brands (other then logic 7) and has a brand history of problematic receivers. I'll admit this unit looks great compared to most receivers, but there comes a line. How much are you willing to pay for a unit you pray to god works each time you turn it on, when you can drop $350-400 on a pioneer that I would never worry about not working, has more power output, and has just as many features just not the looks.


It all comes down to personal preference. I'll give harman a try a little bit longer, but if I continue to have problems, I will no longer remain brand loyal.

Don't get me wrong these are awesome units and I am not down talking them, I just want to make you aware that there does seem to be some build quality issues, so take that into consideration. I can't speak for this specific model yet(AVR 645), i'm just speaking about others i've owned and read others complain about.

One note is the remote works much better at angles. With the DPR I had to have a much more direct line of site. At a 90 degree angle this AVR picks up commands from the remote! Excellent.

Pros:
Excellent sound, outstanding looks, great features,nice zone II remote, did I mention great looks, great Harman Sound, nice bass (bass especially with dvds, I have to turn db down and bass down to stop it from overpowering with too much bass), On screen setup, HDMI, XM, USB, IPOD, video scaling to component, nice EQ auto setup.

Cons:
Pricey when compared to some other brands, large main remote could be nicer, Heavy and large-however most analog receivers are, build quality might be questionable when basing on past models.





Thank you for reading this review. I hope it helps.

The other reviews are complete but an important thing to note is the HDMI connections only support up through 1080i, not 1080p so anyone with a 1080p-capable disc player will notice a significant picture quality degradation if they use the switching ability of the AVR 645. I've opted for just continuing using the TV's second HDMI input for viewing Blu-Ray discs.

Still now I only have two TV video inputs to juggle rather than the 4 I had before.

The first AVR 645 had a couple problems so I had to return it. Since I have had for some time a AVR 235 and AVR 430 that both sound great and never have had any trouble with, I decided to give customer service a chance to rectify the situation. I couldn't be more pleased with the professional and polite manner I was treated--wish all companies could do half as good. The new unit is working great and I certainly would not be afraid to buy another Harman Kardon product.

HK receiver arrived quickly and undamaged and worked perfectly out of the box. Receiver has features commonly found on receivers costing hundreds of dollars more. Receiver has a great look and a nice blue glow to the indicator lights. Auto equalizer didn't produce the result I was looking for so I adjusted EQ manually. Instruction manual and settings take a little time and effort to figure out, but once you understand how it all works you can really dial it in to make the sound absolutely incredible. Unit has two remotes which is nice and an optional Ipod docking station. Hint - if you're going to add an upconverting DVD player check out the Oppo unit. The other manufacturers have a problem with their units(less than $300.00) freezing up. Once you have all the settings configured it's just a one button click to get it all running. My only rub is that the HK remote codes do not allow my cable box remote to turn off the HK receiver. It turns on the receiver, but will not turn it off. I have to go back to the HK remote to turn the unit off.

Just want to add my two cents. I used to love my AVR635. It was amazing, but it has dealt me far more misery than a machine of this caliber should. I hope Harman Kardon fixed their build problems over the course of the last two years while they were updating their AVR 635 to the AVR645. My review pertains to the AVR 635 and is intended as a warning to potential HK customers. I returned my AVR635 to Amazon for a new one soon after I got it because it froze up out of the box. Out of the box, gentle reader, out of the damned box. Should have guessed. Well, it's been a year and a half, and I'm now taking it in for repairs for a second time, making this the 3rd time this exact issue has been a problem for those of you still keeping score. HK won't replace it. Some fancy techie thing blew and froze the whole thing, killed the sound, but the picture still filtered through. And it doesn't just go slow, it shorts and pops and snaps over the course of weeks until it finally will not be revived. Looked around on the internets a little and, golly, wouldn't you know, this is an almost universal problem with a lot of HK products. Buyer beware, there's a reason HK isn't in more living rooms.

Good receiver when it works. Some of the audio formats are not handled correctly when connected to 5.1 speakers. e.g missing or low center channel.

The build issues are still present e.g an clicking sound is heard if the receiver is on for an long time still tryin to get an repair/replacement from Harmon kardon.
Overall an good unit if you are lucky enough to get one without any build issues.

I love this receiver, particularly for the way it remembers the speaker/channnel configuration of every given deck. (I owned an HK home theater receiver from about 12 years back and it drove me nuts having to twist a knob back and forth between Dolby Surround and stereo when I went from tv to cd). They've worked this out, and it really sounds fantastic. The way you can reassign any input to any device is wonderful, although it can make setting it up daunting if you've not savy.

That said, I must add that I wanted to use this in two rooms and gave up. There are two options for this. One is to sacrifice two surround channels for a pair of stereo speakers elsewhere. The other is to use their fancy wall-mounted remote. I can't speaker for the latter, but I found the former ridiculously difficult to understand (bad instructions), complicated to set up, and worst of all: a true pain to switch back and forth from AND simply change the volume. After I got it running, I got so tired of the latter hassles that I gave up. A second set of stereo outs couldn't be too much to ask for, could it?

Still, fine sound. And everyone finds themselves mezmerized by the blue circle.

The first one I received didn't turn on. I could see a small dent in the receiver, so I assume it was damaged during shipment. Amazon did an excellent job of replacing it without any cost to me. The new one works great, no problems. Overall I got a good price on Amazon for a great product. The AVR HK645 can be very confusing to set up if youre not experienced in setting up home theater systems. Because its such a good receiver it has a ton of options. It took me awhile to configure properly, but is working excellent now. The HK phone support is great too.

I have had no problems with this unit. Set up I found to be simple enough. Lots of power, more than I will ever need or I can imagine anyone ever needing. I hav this unit paired beautifully with the Klipsch RCX-4 series speakers and a Klipsch RSW-12 sub, and in my opinion sound phenomenal! I demo'd the new KEF's Q series 3500 and Q7, Monitor Audio, Polk, and a few others, but I could not achieve the sound quality I was looking for until I heard the Klipsch (saved some $$$$ too!). The klipsch provided the crisp highs that you can easily obtain from the unprecendent horn style klipsch tweeters. So overall I am very satisfied with this unit and recommend to others. Looks soo much nicer and current than similar Denon, Onkyo, etc models. Also, I did purchase a HK 47 DVD player to match the HK645 receiver and am returning it due to disatisfaction. Hope this helps!

I bought this receiver around 2 years ago. The first one that came to me was a faulty one. It did not even power up. After talking to the customer service, they sent me a new unit. The new unit worked fine for around 6 months then the video started giving me problems. The service center kept this unit for 3 months citing delays in receiving new parts from HK. This might be a one time problem as HK technical guys explained me that they moved their warehouse to a new location which caused the delay. The service center had to change the mother board to rectify the problem. The fix worked for around 6 months. Now the unit is giving me problem with the sound.

The HK customer service is better than most of the other companies. They listened to the problems and were very receptive.

Based on my experience with this product, I would not recommend this to anyone and also will not buy from HK again.