Sony BDP-S350 Blu-ray Disc Player

Any way you look at it, the $300 Sony BDP-S350 is an excellent Blu-ray player. It's well-designed and easy to use. It supports high-end Blu-ray features such as BD-Live. And it produces good-looking images.The judges in our PC World Test Center evaluation graded the BDP-S350 with a mixture of Good and Very Good scores, with the Very Goods seeing a slight edge.

So far this is the cheapest player we've seen with BD-Live, which lets you access supplemental content on some discs via the Internet. Like all BD-Live players, the BDP-S350 has USB and Ethernet ports. But in this case the ports are limited to their BD-Live capabilities (and firmware updating via Ethernet). The USB port is mounted on the back, a bit of an inconvenience considering you have to bring your own USB drive to use the BD-Live functions.

You can find cheaper Blu-ray players on the market, but the Sony BDP-S350 is a strong bet. This model delivers a solid all-around package, and it does so at a price that won't break your wallet.