The world's hottest AV receiver has had a facelift.

After breathing new life into the moribund AVR market with the TX-SR605 last year, Onkyo has returned with a sequel product, the £400 TX-SR606.

Familiar styling

A cursory glance would indicate that there's little real difference between the two models, so what's new? Well, certainly not the look of the receiver, which I must confess to not being that enamoured with.

The angular fascia and the impossibly small buttons with unreadable labels make me want to hide it away in a cupboard.

Our review model was black, but a silver option is also available.

New features

What is all new for 2008 is 1080i upscaling, two more HDMI sockets, and Dynamic EQ tech. This year's remote control is completely different, too.

It's not a learning remote and there's no fancy LCD display on it, but it is well designed and can control other Onkyo components. And, now that the company has introduced equipment control using the HDMI CEC protocol (dubbed here RIHD), it should be able to control a range of other kit.

Panny's VieraLink, Toshiba's RegzaLink, Samsung's Anynet+ and select Sharp's TVs are all compatible when laced up via HDMI.

Impressive connectivity

Connectability is very good for the price point; the four HDMI inputs give you the same flexibility that you would enjoy on a higher-end receiver.

They can all pass through a 1080p signal and handle uncompressed multichannel audio, including DSD from a Super Audio CD player.

There's no Ethernet port or USB inputs, though, so you can forget about any networking or multimedia playback functionality. That's reserved for Onkyo's higher-priced flagships.

Simple interface

Ease of use is better on the 606 over the 605. Onkyo has significantly improved its GUI.

It's perhaps not quite as flashy as Sony's receiver interface, or as intuitive as Denon's, but the new icons and larger text size make the initial setup procedure a lot more user-friendly.

You can, of course, skip complex manual calibration altogether if you use the Audyssey auto setup feature. Just plug in the supplied microphone, position it in your favourite chair and start the audio test.

The Onkyo will set its own speaker level and delay times. All you have to choose is how you want to allocate the seven speakers.