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Sharp XV-Z30000 - Review Summary

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Art Feierman

In this Summary page, we will only be able to  touch lightly on many of the topics covered in this review.  For those of you who have read the entire review, there should be little new here, except perhaps an opinion or two. For you who scan, this page should give you a pretty darn good idea of how the Z30000 projector performs, its greatest strengths, its most noticeable limitations, and hopefully, a good understanding as to whether this projector is for you. Enjoy!

Sharp XV-Z30000 Projector - The Bottom Line

The XV-Z30000 is a very solid DLP home theater projector.  Selling upward of $3500 (best we can tell), it has some stiff competition, but it holds its own.

The Z30000 isn't particularly spectacular in any one way, but the overall package has to be considered pretty good.  There are some other projectors noticeably better at some things, but often weaker on others.  There doesn't seem to be any major flaw.

Personally this is a projector I could own, assuming it gets placed in a dedicated home theater or properly set up cave, and if I could live with smaller screens than I prefer.  Still, 3D viewing notwithstanding, this projector is very comfortable on a 110" screen and could be pushed larger, without needing a really high gain screen.

As is the case with most of these new 3D capable projectors in the over $2000 range, very few have enough brightness to dazzle you with 3D on a 100" or larger screen.  The Sharp XV-Z30000 can just do a decent job on a 100" screen, with a lamp that's not too old.  Since we received this projector with a lamp with 300+ hours on it, we know it's not quite as bright as a new one would be.  The thing is, that lamp is going to get a good deal dimmer before it's time for replacing it.

So, as has been the case with, I believe just about every other 3D DLP projector over $2000, I see it primarily as a 2D projector.  For those of us really into 3D and wanting respectable brightness, there are competitors out there far more suitable.

If, however, you are just "playing" with 3D, and don't really care about it, then, no problem.

Once we get to 2D brightness, things start to shine. A new one of these Sharp projectors can put 1250 lumens on the screen, or a bit more (I'm figuring new lamp, placed closest to your screen.).

With more than 500 lumens in best mode, in a theater environment 120" diagonal is perfectly doable.   120" might get a little thin at the end of lamp life, but 110" should be just fine.

The overall image is very nicely sharp.  The Detail enhancement feature can further give you the impression of more sharpness, but, can quickly become  a little over the top (such as the 10 setting defaulting in Stage mode). As mentioned earlier, even the 10 setting tends to make closeups of faces look "leathery" or hard.  Dial that back except maybe on sports. 0 is the default for Movie modes!

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