Customer Reviews

Harman Kardon AVR120 Audio/Video Receiver

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Let's cut the jive and get real about what it takes to make a quality home theater system (my goal) and also have great stereo music reproduction. First of all, it doesn't have to cost you a lot of money. I have a small living room (12'X20') and a good 27" flatscreen TV. I also have a tight budget. I did a bunch of research on lower-end, lower priced, and lower powered (RMS watts-per-chanel) 5.1 Channel AVR's for surround-sound home theater. When I got done comparing everthing available in the $300. to $400. range (a whole bunch!!) I ended up buying the Harman/Kardon 120 AVR. Most people have modest-sized living rooms and listening areas and they simply purchase too large of a system, including a way too powerful A/V receiver (expensive too!) Buy yourself some quality but inexpensive speakers (Polks/bookshelves or JVC's etc.) that are capable of handling the peak music loads without distortion and a cheap & small powered subwoofer and have at it!! The AVR 120 has a low RMS per channel power rating but it is also a wide-ranging amp that doesn't crap-out when the sound gets loud and just keeps driving the speakers cleanly. It has lots of great features and is easy to program and is user friendly.It looks great too, and is a great backbone for my super-sounding home theater. I love this little receiver and it just keeps amazing me.....my friends think I paid BIG BUCKS for it all....I just smile!

We've owned this since the original release and even after all these years, this is a solid little work-horse. Never had any trouble with it, easy to use, intuitive design (except for the remote which I'll cover later). Affordable and gives quality sound although a lot will depend upon your speakers. If you are a high end consumer that expects perfection - keep going. This isn't your product. However, if you are searching for an affordable solution that provides clear sound at all levels this is for you. Perfect for the average household and easy to use. Has zero frills - a few useful pre-sets, plenty of additional jacks.

After years of using in the living room, we switched this to the bedroom to power-up a Polk Soundbar and subwoofer for the bedroom television. Works very nicely although the end result may be a bit much. In fact, the sound is superior to the living room system and we keep resorting back to this one by leaving the door open - not a great choice by any means.

Now, the remote. I despite the button placement on the thing - spouse loves it. I suspect it has to do with your finger placement/hand size. It doesn't control all product lines and is a pain to set-up.

I think this is very difficult to judge whether or not a receiver is a good receiver or not. To tell whether it sounds good is very subjective to me. The sound is decent but I can't tell the difference between my old AV from this one. They both cost me above the same amount. For me, the control is very difficult to use. To change the sound source or the DSP type, I have to push the up and down button repeatly before it reaches to the type I want. This is very bad design. A rotor or something like that will be a better design. I hook it up to my TV's line out. The volumn is very low. I have to crank up the volumn before I can get decent loudness. However, once I switch from TV to DVD, CD, Radio, or any other source, it becomes way too loud. I have to constantly adjust the volumn if I switch from different source. This is horrible. The remote, as with any other factory remote, is useless. The very bad thing about this AV is that it dies on me after 11 months. It is sitting there half of the time. I hardly run this receiver but it still dies. This is my first Harman. I don't recomment this brand at this point. There doesn't seem to have any good thing about this receiver except that it has alot of RCA/SVHS jacks in the back for me to hook all kind of stuffs to it; and the good old fashion rotational volumn control.