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If the Pioneer BDP-LX52 is Jonathan Ross, then the Pioneer BDP-320 is his brother Paul – a lot cheaper and not quite as sharp. But you’re still getting a lot of Blu-ray player for your money, and with Pioneer’s patented picture tech pulling the strings, great performance is virtually a shoo-in. Read our full Pioneer BDP-320 review and find out if that’s the case.
Visually the Pioneer BDP-320 is a stunner. The lustrous gloss-black finish, sleek lines, silver detailing and blue lights combine to devastating effect, and in terms of build it has the heft and rigidity of a high-end deck. Back panel connections include all the essentials – HDMI v1.3, component and Ethernet for BD Live downloads – but extras like multichannel analogue outs are jettisoned to keep the cost down.
Connect that HDMI port to your TV and sure enough, the all-digital 1080/24p pictures will hit you for six. Fine detail retrieval, black depth and colour fidelity are among the best you’ll see at this price and upscaled DVDs are clean and crisply defined. Sonically the Pioneer BDP-320 is in another league to any budget deck you care to mention, offering refined CD playback and flawless decoding of HD Blu-ray soundtracks (both Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio are supported).
Read our Pioneer BDP-LX52 review now
Although the spec isn’t as comprehensive as the LG BD390, it’s solid enough. On board is 1GB of memory for BD Live downloads and the USB port on the front supports DivX, MP3, WMA and JPEG. Pioneer’s Precision Quartz Lock System (PQLS) removes jitter when playing music via HDMI. The only thing missing from this little lot is Wi-Fi support, but the Pioneer BDP-320 isn’t the only one to neglect it.
Hardened home cinephiles will love the Pioneer BDP-320’s Video Adjust menu, which lets you fine-tune picture performance and store presets for different types of display. The operating system is slick and sophisticated, while the intuitive remote is as gorgeous as the player itself.
There are now plenty of cheap budget Blu-ray decks on the market that do a decent job, but if you want an extra touch of class in terms of build quality and performance then the Pioneer BDP-320 is well worth the extra outlay.
[...] Read our Pioneer BDP-320 review now Connectivity round the back is average and no better. There’s the obvious HDMI port, and it’s joined by component and composite options for video, but audio is less well catered for. Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio support is built in, but you’ll have to hook up to an HDMI-equipped receiver to get multichannel output, as the Toshiba BDX2000 doesn’t offer it. [...]