Yamaha RX-V381

FOR Big presentation; fast and articulate; easy set-up.

AGAINST Few features; lacks a little authority and solidity.

Like graduate salesmen, more and more tech goods are expected to go far beyond what they initially signed up for: smartphones can now start your car, fridges can talk, and kettles turn themselves on to boil.

Even with budget AV amplifiers, a number of features are becoming almost mandatory: Wi-fi, DLNA streaming, high-resolution audio support… all features of the Denon AVR-X1300W for example.

The Yamaha RX-V381, however, flies in the face of all that. This is a back-to-basics, 70W-per-channel 5.1 surround amplifier with Bluetooth and an AM/FM tuner. No Spotify Connect. No Dolby Atmos. Not even Yamaha’s MusicCast multi-room technology.

Pledging itself as fervently to the retro revolution as a department store’s homeware section, it doesn’t even have commonplace banana-plug connections for all of its speaker terminals – the surround and centre channel inputs are the less substantial spring-loaded type.

So why would you consider buying this amp, you ask? It’s a simple answer, but a good one: performance.

Single-minded purpose

It should come as little surprise the RX-V381 impresses in the sound department. After all, Yamaha’s 2016 range of amps has been exemplary, from the RX-V581 to the Award-winning RX-A1060 and high-end RX-A3060. The RX-V381 is very much a sonic descendant of those devices, its primary concern being the size and scale of the sound it delivers.