1080p Home Theater Projector Comparison Report - Image Quality2

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Art Feierman

Optoma HD20

You don't usually expect the least expensive projector of them all to have particularly good color, out of the box, yet: the HD20's out of the box picture quality is rather good. From a color temperature standpoint, the HD20's "best" mode is almost dead on the ideal 6500K, but that number doesn't account for green being a bit down from red and blue. Still, very watchable.

Panasonic PT-AE4000

Nothing else needs to be said: The PT-AE4000 really did look extremely good, right out of the box. Most impressive! The projector does tend to be a little heavy on the reds and oversatuated. Reducing color saturation is easy. Reds get addressed with calibration.

Samsung SP-A600

Quoting from the full review: The SP-A600 does a very nice job out of the box...there is a slight overemphasis in the reds, just noticeable in skin tones.

Sanyo PLV-Z700

It's been a long time since I've had a Z700 here, good thing I write things down! This from the review: I quickly concluded that "out of the box" picture quality was reasonably good, and definitely not great. Overall, without adjustment, the image is too warm (reddish). Shadow detail was also just good (which improved with a slight increase to the brightness setting).

Sharp XV-Z15000

A little more complicated to describe than most: I have to rate the "out of the box" picture quality as very good.

The reason is simple: If you want the best color right out of the box, we recommend the Natural mode, which really is very good. It may not produce the best black level performance (it's a lot brighter, too), but you should like the skin tones, and overall color balance.

I also said this: Sharp's Natural mode on the XV-Z15000 projector is, in terms of color accuracy, superior to most projectors' "best" mode, out of the box.

and in summary, this: the Sharp is one of the more watchable projectors without doing a color calibration

Viewsonic Pro8100

This Viewsonic Pro8100 did not produce especially good, accurate colors out of the box, in preliminary measurements. Although colors were off a bit, it was no worse than most projectors. It's been almost two years since I worked with the Viewsonic. In that time, more and more projectors have hit the market sporting better out of the box picture quality.

Vivitek H1080FD

I figure these lowest cost 1080p projectors are the ones most likely to end up in the hands of folks who just want to fire'em up and enjoy. That works fine, as I wrote this about the H1080FD projector: The out of the box color is pretty good, which is a very good thing, since the Vivtek lacks the tradtional R,G,B brightness and contrast controls for doing a grayscale balance.