Sharp XV-Z3000 Projector Review - Image Quality

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Art Feierman

Excellent image quality is what the XV-Z3000 does best. It performs very well in every catagory, natural flesh tones, rich, colors, excellent contrast resulting in the blackest blacks anywhere near the price, and the very good shadow detail, that you would expect with a projector that can produce really dark blacks.

Let's start with the handling of flesh tones.

For your perusal, the usual group of images from Lord of the Rings and The Fifth Element. These four images can be clicked on for larger versions. All of these images are from standard DVD versions, we'll look at some HD images as well.

I should note that most of these were taken with the projectors default settings (Movie2, Middle Iris), without adjusting color balance.

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Quicktip, about the many photos: There are limits to the dynamic range of my digital camera. It cannot fully capture what most projectors put on the screen. As a result, although you should find the images useful, remember they are here to support the commentary, and not the other way around - so, "add a pound of salt"... In reality the images on the screen, are always more dynamic, and have far better shadow detail than these photos.

XV-Z3000 Shadow Detail and Black Levels

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This Sharp projector produces images with exceptionally "rich" blacks. All the more impressive since it is only using the Darkchip2 processor found in less expensive DLP projectors (and some its price). The XV-Z3000 claims 6500:1 contrast ratio, and this time, it seems to be a very good indication of what the Sharp is capable of, in terms of black levels.