Viewsonic Pro9000 - Review Summary

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Art Feierman

Viewsonic Pro9000 Projector - The Bottom Line

❮ ❯

We were able to get a good look at the Pro9000 and its feature set, but we are awaiting a full production projector. This engineering sample (pre-production) had a number of issues, some that Viewsonic has said have already been fixed in newer versions of the firmware, and others were being implemented when we discussed what we found with them more than two weeks ago. Over the years, we've reviewed a number of pre-production projectors and are always impressed by all the changes a manufacturer can make in the last few weeks leading up to first deliveries.

With that in mind, we expect the final Pro9000 to meet our expectations. We'll know soon enough.

The User areas had some problems (would not save correctly - fixed we're told). We're also looking for improved color. The projector is capable of some pretty respectable picture quality, but it should be capable of more. We look forward to the promised improvements.

Let's consider the other aspects of this Viewsonic Pro 9000 home theater projector. The projector puts up a sharp image, in part due to being a single chip DLP projector, which means no three color images to converge.

Placement flexibility is classic for a lower cost DLP projector, which means a 1.2:1 manual zoom lens. That does translate to limited front to back placement range, which for a 100" diagonal screen means the projector can be placed from 10 feet and change to 13 feet back. Lens offset is moderate, which should work well in most rooms.

Pro9000 Brightness: Calibrated, the Pro9000 offers almost 450 lumens, plenty for smaller or medium sized screens in your home theater. In its brightest mode, we found 1380 lumens under the hood at maximum. That's well above average. Those almost 1400 lumens are, unfortunately not pretty. It could not be improved, significantly, with the limitations of the User area functioning. One of two User modes is where you end up when you start modifying one of the Preset color modes.

Pro9000 2D Only: A friendly reminder that this Viewsonic projector is not 3D capable. If 3D is your thing, look elsewhere.

Pro9000 Color and Overall Picture Quality

❮ ❯

There are several ways to get a good looking picture from this Pro9000's color modes and gamma settings, but we will wait for the final version, for an in depth assessment, as we expect changes.

In this early version black level performance is very good, but not quite "ultra high contrast". Shadow detail is average, a real step down from the best. Again another area where there could be improvement on the final versions.

Picture in Picture is a nice touch that some may like. Personally the two sizes are small, and the source options are limited for the In Picture, but that's typical of PIP solutions on other projectors as well.

I like that this projector is pretty quiet. By comparison, an Epson 5010 is much louder at full power than this Viewsonic Pro9000.