Looks Okay.

Noisy. Not a quality tuner.

I bought this for a friend off of ebay for $100. I already own a very fine Yamaha Tuner (the 950) so I figured this might be decent. Maybe this was abused by its previous owner - but it looked fine not abused - Unfortunately, the sound is very noisy even with a cable antenna. With a dipole, it was unlistenable. This should be avoided unless you hear it before you buy it. You can do better than this with a good clock radio.

Similar Products Used:

Many separate tuners.

I have the TX480 which is basically the same model with different features and it works fine. Picks up a lot of stations. I am 35 miles outside of Washington DC. In this price range a tuner is a tuner is a tuner.

This tuner is the most miserable piece of electronic junk that has ever been created. With an external antenna it does pick up as many stations as my 4 year old pioneer car stereo receives. I returned it as soon as possible, and on a whim picked up the Yamaha RX-V393 home theatre receiver. The tuner in this $230 reciever is much better than the stand alone TX-492 and I am extremely happy with it as a second room system. AVOID THE TX-492 AT ALL COSTS, it deserves a -1000 rating...

I own the TX-492RDS, the version of this tuner with the Radio Data System built in.
It does a fine job of picking up stations in the poor reception area in which I live - much better than my previous Aiwa model. It also picks up the RDS data without too much trouble, and that impressed me since I'm using the internal FM aerial. My neighbour owns a Denon unit with RDS and that tends to struggle. My Yamaha unit copes fine.

Recommended; it's also one of the cheapest RDS tuners I've seen around.

I purchased the Yamaha 492 tuner for periodic listening and recording. I amnot a big FM listener, so price was a consideration. I picked up the Yamaha
unit new for $169, and felt that it was a good unit at this price. It is an
attractive all black unit with an orange display of station and signal strength.
After a 72 hour break-in period, I found the unit to provide good basic sound
quality in the FM stereo mode. The unit picked up 35+ stereo stations in my
area, and had a very low background noise level with strong stations. The
sound was clear, detailed, and had good bass and soundstaging. The sonics
remind me of a modern consumer CD player that lacks high resolution. I would
also say that the sound had a mild "solid state" quality.

This unit has a fairly high output level, and worked well into a "passive"
preamplifier. Inside, most of the circuit was on a single board at the
rear of the cabinet. For those who like to modify (tweek?), this tuner
looks like it would be very easy to work on and improve the power supply
system, decoupling, and signal coupling. On an absolute scale, I would
give this unit a solid "3" rating, and considering the price paid, perhaps
a 3+ or a 4-. Gladly recommended for general FM stereo listening, with
further potiential for those who care to tweek the circuits.

Well equipped but it is just an average tuner in terms of sound.... At $199 it is pricey.

easy to handle
good sound quality

after a year the backup battery broke down

we bought a year ago a complete Yamaha high fi set
with the TX-492 tuner
originally be bought the TX-492 but we got the TX-492 RDS from our dealer.
it performes well
has a good sound
and is very easy to handle
the only dissepointment is the backupbattery for the memmory
that broke down

Good looking, well performing

Pricey

This unit is pricey - I would have paid more but I only had $180 on me. I can't say how good the sound is because I listened to it through low/mid fi speakers, but it picked up signals with ease. Adding a TV antenna really helped find the radio waves in my college apartment with cinder block walls.