Yamaha RX-A2A

The most affordable of Yamaha’s premium Aventage range, this is an AV receiver with bold sound to match its bold looks

AV receiver | ₹¨83,990

The Yamaha RX-A2A has been a long time coming. Thanks largely to the pandemic, it’s been three long years since its predecessor was first launched – an aeon in tech terms.

Much has changed in that time, too. Most notably, we’ve seen the arrival of 8K TVs and next-gen consoles, both of which are capable of handling new, more advanced video formats. Seeing as an AV receiver sits at the heart of a home cinema system, ideally connecting every component to the screen, it’s vital that it can handle every format that’s thrown at it – or that might be thrown at it within the next few years.

The RX-A2A is part of Yamaha’s premium Aventage range, with ‘Aventage’ being short for ‘AV entertainment for a new age’, so it’s under even more pressure than most to deliver fancy format goodness. It’s the most affordable Aventage model, though, so there are cost constraints involved – Yamaha can’t simply throw the kitchen sink at it and still hit the competitive price it’s set.

All of which has led the company to get impressively creative, delivering HDMI 2.1 features via lower-bandwidth sockets. Some of these are handled natively, while some use technology called Display Stream Compression, or DSC for short. At least, the RX-A2A will handle these features once a number of updates have been applied.

Until then (and afterwards, for that matter), this Aventage AVR needs to work extra hard to impress us with its sound quality.

Dressed to impress