Planar 7060 Projector Review – Image Quality

Affordable DLP projectors sporting the top of the line Darkchip3 DLP processor (with superior black level performance and contrast) are few and far between, at least compared to the lower priced Darkchip2 projectors which now start at under $1000 US. In the US market, Optoma has had their HD7100, now being replaced by a more expensive (and more capable) HD7300 with outboard processing from Gennum. We have been awaiting their $2000 HD73, but as of this writing it isn’t shipping yet. BenQ’s PE-8720 is very capable, and flexible and still commanding over $3000 street price.

Enter the Planar 7060, at $2995 MSRP. This is the least expensive of the three Planar’s with Darkchip3, and the only one without lens shift.

What counts most, though, if the 7060 will work in your room, is its image quality, which I should start off by saying is excellent, as the images will show.

I mentioned in the first page, that there was one serious problem with the pre-production 7060 I was provided. Fortunately Planar’s product management had a quick work-around for it, and assured me that the units just being shipped have upgraded firmware that solves that problem. I will show you what was happening below, but hate to start this section “with a problem”.

So let’s begin with handling of flesh tones, which I have to say, the Planar 7060 does very well out of the box. The first images below, are the usual suspects – from Lord of the Rings – Return of the King, and The Fifth Element. Let’s start with Gandalf, and Arwen:

Let me note that all the images shown, are “out of the box” performance – no calibration of any sort, other than a quick adjustment of brightness and contrast. And, the “fix” for the problem, which amounted to setting what Planar labels as white peaking from 0 to 10 (out of 100). That setting of white peaking, primarily affects very dark areas, which I will show you the results below.) Overall, considering no tuning of grayscale has been done, the color balance is very, very good. (As usual, you may click to enlarge almost all images).

Please consider – these images are here to support our commentary, not the other way around. There are limitations to the digital images I shoot, for openers, the camera can’t capture the full dynamic range of what the projectors can put on a screen. As a result, shadow detail is lost, and some hightlight detail gets blown out as well. The images can provide some useful insight, in conjunction with the text, but take them with “a pound of salt” – as a grain won’t be enough! -art

Of course HD sources are much higher quality, with better dynamic range than regular DVDs, so here are a few images from HD-DVD, starting with the movie Aeon Flux:

I especially was impressed with the first of these two images, a night scene and Aeon’s skin tones looked just exceptional.