Panasonic PT-AR100U Projector - Performance 2

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Art Feierman

PT-AR100U Eco-Mode vs. Full Power

True, dropping to eco-mode will make the lamp last longer - or so we assume, since Panasonic does not provide the lamp life for full power, only eco-mode at 3000 hours.

Since this is both a very bright, and somewhat noisy (fan noise) projector at full power, many people will choose to run the Panasonic in Eco-mode.

Brightness drops almost exactly 25% going from full to eco. For our testing, we considered Cinema1 mode, but all modes should have the same percentage drop.

Lumen Output (Eco Lamp, Cinema1): 601, vs. Full power (Cinema1): 798

Panasonic PT-AR100U Pre-Calibration Color temp, REC 709 Mode:

Color Temp over IRE Range (Cinema mode)
30 IRE	7217
50 IRE	7024
80 IRE	7138
100 IRE	7171

As mentioned elsewhere in the review, our "best" mode starts out a little cool. That mode is REC 709 (I know, a strange name, compared to Cinema1, Dynamic, Sports, etc.,) but REC 709 is the name of the standard for color for HDTV, and REC 709 modes are now generally the best found on projectors that offer one (the exception would be a THX mode, and that normally would be very similar).

As you can see, fairly consistent, but averaging around 7100K, compared to the ideal 6500K. That's not a very large miss!

PT-AR100U, Post Calibration, Best Mode (REC 709)

Color Temp over IRE Range (Post calibration)
20 IRE =	6626
30 IRE =	6465
40 IRE =	6393
50 IRE =	6360
60 IRE =	6326
70 IRE =	6420
80 IRE =	6570
90 IRE =	6607
100 IRE =	6471
Average gamma = 2.18

Calibrated color temps, 20 – 100 IRE.

Those are some very nice looking calibration numbers. True the spread is about 300K but that's still pretty good. Exceptional tightness might be all the IRE ranges being within 150K. That doesn't happen often. All considered: