Pioneer BCS-424 review

Despite this, its excellent performance in other areas makes up for its smart shortcomings. Image quality’s arguably on par with the best all-in-one systems we’ve seen. High-definition images look bright, having plenty of contrast, although some shadow detail was lacking at the default settings and edges were aggressively smoothed. Thankfully, you counteract this in the picture settings menu, where the three presets and the more advanced User mode give you more control over image sharpness and noise reduction. Sadly, you can’t preview your changes; you must stop the film.

Its DVD upscaling seems mostly focussed on noise reduction rather than edge sharpening. There was a definite reduction in detail, although colours were preserved and there were few artefacts.

Most importantly for an all-in-one system, sound quality was excellent. Filling our test room at a little over half volume, there was plenty of room to manoeuvre for anyone looking to equip a larger room with surround sound. The free-standing speakers pump audio straight at your ears, creating audio that encompasses you with no noticeable gaps. The centre speaker never felt drowned out, even with the subwoofer pushing out surprisingly capable bass, and we couldn’t spot any distortion unless we really pushed the volume to its maximum.

It isn’t as well equipped as the competition for Smart TV features, but in many respects the BCS-424 is still an ideal all-in-one home cinema system. Picture quality is – for the most part – excellent, and sound quality is above what we expect from a combined system of this price. If your budget won’t stretch to separates, this is the next best thing.