Someone Polled 4K Blu-ray Player Owners About the Reliability of Different Models Over Time, and There’s a Clear Winner

Nearly 400 4K Blu-ray users shared information about player issues
There is a huge gap between the best and worst in the poll
Panasonic will be happy; Sony not so much

One of the things I love most about Reddit is the way people share their experiences about particular products: whether it’s a kitchen knife, a portable air conditioner, or a Gibson guitar, I know I’ll be able to find sound advice on what to buy and what to watch out for. And now the folks at r/hometheater have come together to talk about the best 4K Blu-ray players and their reliability.

The poll was conducted by r/hometheater poster “requieminadream” and generated nearly 400 responses — almost double the number of respondents to the previous poll — from r/4KBluray, r/Bluray, r/PhysicalMediaMatters, the AVS forums, and the Blu-ray.com forums. And there are very clear differences between Blu-ray devices from different companies.

Requieminadream very kindly summed up the results in one sentence: “The Sony UBP-X700 is still the problem child, the Panasonic DP-UB820 is still the champion and the expensive UB-9000 showed the sharpest numbers (small sample though).”

Which 4K Blu-ray players are best?

One of the reasons I love Reddit’s wisdom is that with few exceptions, reviewers can’t spend years with the products they review. So my car’s reviewers don’t know about the software glitches that drive me crazy and sometimes require restarting at traffic lights, and my router’s reviewers don’t know about its tendency to misbehave every few weeks.

It’s the same with Blu-ray players: even the most thorough review won’t be able to tell you whether a player is likely to pack up in year two or three. (Though one exception is our review of the Panasonic DP-UB820, written by our senior TV Hardware editor, James Davidson, as he wrote us a new review based on the combination of its use in our test room. And having used it daily for several years previously.)

But in general, surveys like this are a valuable resource.

The Panasonic DP-UB820 is by far the community’s favorite player: 43.4% of respondents own one, and its problem rate is about half that of the Sony UBP-X700. The serious problem rate was very low at just 8%, backing up what James said when he called it “the workhorse of the 4K Blu-ray player world.”

The “problem child” emerging from this latest survey is the Sony UBP-X700. Of Sony’s 103 users, about 77.7% reported issues over time; recurring and/or serious problems were 23%. The number one complaint is freezing during triple-layer transitions, which has long been discussed on the Blu-ray forums.

Another interesting trend the survey reveals is that of problems over time. For the Sony, problems became more frequent over time, but for the Panasonic, the trend was toward earlier occurrence of failures, but better long-term reliability.

Other players in the survey fell between the two extremes, but some of the best results came from “other” players, including game consoles and more specialized Blu-ray products.

Satisfaction with these products was exceptionally high, with the PS5 scoring significantly higher than the Xbox. This is all the more striking given the performance of the Sony

I should point out, as the original Redditor did, that in some cases the ownership sample sizes in these surveys are quite small, so we should take the results with a pinch of salt. However, the Panasonic UB820 and Sony X700 were best represented and are the two most popular players, so their data is arguably the most useful anyway.