Pioneer UDP-LX500
FOR Crisp, insightful picture; dynamic, expressive sound; impressive timing AGAINST Little in the way of smart features
Justifying why you should spend £1000 on a 4K Blu-ray player is difficult, especially when you can buy a decent quality entry-level deck for less than £200. But if any AV brand can convince you to set your sights a little higher, it’s Pioneer.
When making the leap from budget to premium 4K Blu-ray player, you should expect the build quality to go up a notch and the Pioneer UDP-LX500 doesn’t disappoint. It’s solid, stable and sturdy, and designed to help reduce unwanted vibrations and outside interference.
The Pioneer’s disc tray is suspended and acoustically damped to stop the sound from your speakers sending vibrations into the chassis. It uses a smooth mechanism that makes it a lot quieter in operation than its closest rival, the Panasonic DP-UB9000.
The UDP-LX500 comes with a streamlined rectangular remote, which will be familiar to anyone who has previously owned a Pioneer player or AV receiver. The presence of a backlight is a bonus in darkened rooms and there are quick buttons to much-used features.
Easy navigation
The menu system is simpler than Panasonic’s somewhat overcomplicated one, with two elements you should investigate – Audio Parameters and Video Parameters.
The latter allows you to assign preferred video settings to one of three presets. Within each you can change brightness, contrast, hue, chroma level, sharpness and noise reduction. These are useful if you want to give the content you’re watching a particular flavour.
It is definitely worth setting the Pioneer up for the display you’re using. You are given the option of LCD TV, OLED TV or projector. It’s straightforward and produces the best picture possible.
Bringing up the player’s Audio Parameters allows you to access the digital filters for its internal DAC. You can choose between Sharp (which promotes a solid sound), Slow (a softer sound) and Short (a smoother sound). We settle on Sharp for our testing, but the differences are subtle, so do experiment.
The LX500 is a universal disc player, so besides Full HD, 3D and 4K Blu-rays, it can also handle Dvd-audio and SACD. It also supports the usual HDR formats, such as HDR10 and Dolby Vision, and at the time of writing an HDR10+ software update was promised for the Spring.
As is the trend with expensive 4K Blu-ray players, there are twin HDMI outputs, allowing you to split the audio and video signals if you’ve got a suitable home cinema set-up. There’s no multi-channel analogue out, but Pioneer believes that most people buying the UDP-LX500 will already own an AV receiver with HDMI inputs compatible with the latest audio and video formats. And we’re inclined to agree.
There’s no wi-fi, but there is an ethernet connection – the Pioneer doesn’t have any smarts such as Netflix or Youtube, but most modern displays now feature these apps as standard.
Owners of compatible Pioneer AV receivers will be able to take advantage of the UDP-LX500’S Precision Quartz Lock System (PQLS) feature, which allows your Pioneer AV receiver to act as the digital master clock in your system. That should mean reduced jitter (digital timing errors) between player and amp and result in improved audio.
Movies and music in balance
Pioneer designed this player to be just as accomplished with music as it is with movies, and it shows. We start with the soundtrack to the 4K Blu-ray of Kingsman: The Golden Circle and, as Poppy’s missile strike takes out the Kingsman headquarters, the explosions sound dynamic and suitably bombastic. There’s weight and power here, but the Pioneer also keeps a tight grip, drawing crisply defined lines around rumblings as they ripple out and around your head.
Switch to CD playback and the Pioneer sounds just as natural and effortless in its delivery. It equals the Cambridge Audio for precision but adds more punch. It has a fine grasp of timing and delivers a solid and robust drum beat to accompany Eminem’s White America. Hit the Direct button, which turns off all digital video and audio processing, and a little extra clarity is added to the sound. Music sounds purer, with detail and dynamics easier to extract.
Play George Michael’s Faith and there’s a nice, even balance to the sound. A tight twang to the guitar strums is pleasing, and percussion has just enough of an edge to entertain without sounding harsh.
Compared with its closest rival, the Panasonic DP-UB9000, the Pioneer organises the different elements that little bit better and delivers audio with greater focus and precision.
The high praise doesn’t stop with the player’s sound quality. The Pioneer UDP-LX500 delivers a fantastic picture too. It’s close to that of the Panasonic but just about edges it in detail and clarity.
Explosive – but proportionate
As Poppy’s missiles strike their targets in Kingsman, the Pioneer delivers the explosions with vim and vigour. Bursts of yellow don’t so much pierce the night sky as smash right through it. They don’t overwhelm the overall image, though, and there’s still plenty of detail in the darker areas of the scene.
As Eggsy and Merlin chat among the ruins of Kingsman HQ, the droplets of water on Merlin’s coat are superbly defined, the punchy bright lights of nearby buildings catching both the texture of his coat and the beads of water with precision.
Skin textures and facial stubble are treated in the same confident and colourful way. We say colourful, but there’s subtlety and neutrality too. The Panasonic DP-UB9000, on other hand, prefers a slightly richer colour balance. Switching to the 4K Blu-ray of Despicable Me, the Pioneer’s balanced colour palette is even easier to see. The green, yellow and red on Gru’s jumper all pop out of the screen without appearing overdone.
The UDP-LX500 is also a confident upscaler. Played through a Samsung 65Q9F TV, the Blu-ray of Transformers: Dark Of The Moon isn’t completely devoid of noise, but it has a firmer grasp on the picture than the TV’S upscaler.
Pioneer might be a little late to the market with a 4K Blu-ray player, but the UDP-LX500 has been worth the wait. It’s not cheap, but if your home cinema system can make the most of its abilities, every night should be movie night.