Review: Nyrius ARIES Home+

Depending on one's home, space can be a premium. There's not always the square footage to set up every piece of beloved hardware. At other times, the idea of hauling equipment up flights of stairs is a bothersome task left undone. It's for those reasons and many more the Nyrius ARIES Home+ piqued my interest. It claims to wirelessly stream high-definition 1080p video and 6 Mbps DTS/AC3 or 32-96 KHz PCM audio from numerous home devices to any chosen display. Furthermore, it says it can do so without added latency and up to a range of 100 feet. It's a bold statement and one I would put to the test through walls and floors.

The Nyrius ARIES Home+ ships with the transmitter and receiver, mounting screws, power adapters for both units, a single HDMI cable, a remote to power on the system and to switch transmitter inputs, and an infrared extender for increasing the range of IR-equipped remotes.

Neither unit is particularly large, making placement easy. The rectangular transmitter stands upright at around 20 cm. Two HDMI-OUT and one HDMI-IN rest at its back along with the IR and service ports. The square receiver is about half the size. Mounting brackets are on the side and bottom face respectively. Manual power and source buttons are placed opposite.

The setup process is fairly straightforward, with one exception. You just connect the device you wish you stream into an HDMI port on the transmitter, and another HDMI cable from the receiver unit to your display. Once powered on, audio and video will begin streaming automatically. Streaming the audio from a computer is slightly more involved. It may be necessary to configure a playback/listen mode through the sound control panel.

The first test I ran was to see how well it mirrored the imagery on my monitor, sending it to a television several rooms over. I browsed the desktop, the internet, and even loaded up a few games. All were rendered in perfect clarity with equally sharp audio. No compression artifacts were visible. This also proved an excellent way to watch services like Hulu on a bigger screen without a premium membership or for when soon-to-expire episodes are available only through a website.

Of course, the real trial was to see how well I could play a game streamed from a console elsewhere in the house. In my case, that meant connecting the transmitter to the WiiU a floor below me. It should go without saying that placement requires extra consideration for gaming with the ARIES Home+ due to controller ranges. Thankfully, my gamepad was still within the system's sphere of influence.

I began with Mario Kart 8. As with the last test, it was impossible to tell that what I was seeing and hearing was being streamed. More impressive was the fact that I could perceive no additional input lag. Every button press resulted in an instantaneous action on screen. But Mario Kart 8 isn't the most demanding game. I needed a subject that makes fingers bleed for my experiment, and what better candidate than something from Platinum?

I next loaded up Bayonetta 2. The results were the identical. Latency was imperceptible and the video quality was faultless. And after hours of killing angels, I didn't notice a single hiccup in the transmission. 

The Nyrius ARIES Home+ left me pleasantly surprised. It proved itself capable at every given task to the point where I easily forgot I wasn't watching nor playing something natively. At $200 it's not cheap, however, but it does back up what it preaches. It may even give me the perfect excuse to dig out the Xbox 360 from storage to play Red Dead Redemption without worrying about room on the entertainment center. That earns it a very high thumbs up.

Disclosure: A review unit was provided to us by the company. Nyrius ARIES Home+ retails for $200 at select retailers. 

Be sure to hit up the official site for product details.