Sony VPL-VW1000ES Projector - Performance

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Art Feierman

On this page, we take a look at the VPL-VW1000ES projector's brightness, sharpness, and image noise. We'll discuss brightness in conjunction with 3D usage, as well. Also considered here, are the physical attributes of light leakage and audible noise.

Sony VPL-VW1000ES Brightness

VPL-VW1000ES Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom)
Reference	1269 @ 7127, 1368 lumens @ 6858 with Color Temp on DCI
TV	646 @ 7560
Cinema Film 1	704 @ 6934
Cinema Film 2	330 @ 6579
Cinema Digital	526 @ 6752
Game	1269 @ 7193
Photo	1128 @ 5916
Bright Cinema	1187 @ 7180
Bright TV	967 @ 11508

Before I get into a lot of measurements and numbers, let's talk practical. This projector, fully calibrated, puts out about 1200 lumens. In a good room, that should provide respectable brightness for a 150" diagonal screen. I've even watched movies, while filling my 124" screen, in low power mode.

This projector doesn't have a mode that's uglier that has significantly more lumens, but that 1200 lumens will certainly still fill a niced sized screen, 100" diagonal and even larger, with modest controlled lighting for sports viewing with friends. I'm talking about my room with 7 down facing led lights in the back half of the room, or with my shutters open just a little in the daytime allowing a controlled amount of daylight to leak in.

Sony rates the VPL-VW1000ES projector as a 2000 lumen projector. We never measured anything close to 2000 lumens, but that surprised me not at all. We don't measure looking for the absolute brightest a projector can do, as that usually isn't a very usable picture. I consider this projector's performance to be in line with expectations, in fact, if anything, I was very pleased to end up with 1200 calibrated lumens.

First are the lumen measurements for each of the preset and user modes. Also included, was the measured color temp for white, for each mode.

All the images below were taken with the same exposure so you can get a hint at the relative differences:

Reference Mode: Pretty much the only mode you need. Still, below, we show you the relative pictures from each mode. These are all about the same brightness, due to compensating with the camera when these images were taken. The actual brightest range varies dramatically, with the least bright mode being less than 1/3 as bright as Reference mode.

Sony VPL-VW1000ES Modes: Image Comparison

Reference

Cinema Film 1

Cinema Film 2

Cinema Digital

Bright Cinema

Bright TV

Game

Photo

Effect of zoom on lumen output (Reference mode)
Zoom out	1279, 1379 on DCI Color Temp
Mid-zoom	1269
Zoom in	1035

Considering this is a 2.1:1 zoom lens (that is a lot of zoom range), the less than 25% difference between wide angle and telephoto is most impressive.

Lumen Output (Low Lamp, Reference mode): 884

We measured a drop of almost exactly 30% when dropping the lamp into eco-mode, that should be consistant across all modes.