Compare Projectors - Epson 6100 vs PLV-Z700 - 4

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Art Feierman

Color accuracy

First of all, out of the box picture differs significantly, and that's a big factor if you just want to set it up, and not bother "improving" the picture. In the review I said this about the Home Cinema 6100: "Darn good! I was pleasantly surprised. The Epson 6100 is very good, right of the box in TheaterBlack 1 image mode - its "best" mode... the Epson is good enough (right out of the box) to be enjoyably watchable."

The Sanyo PLV-Z700 was a different story: "I quickly concluded that "out of the box" picture quality was reasonably good, and definitely not great."

Now I'm not being overly critical, but in my mind it's a difference. Hey, all things considered, almost all projectors look reasonably good, although I've seen a few out of the box with ghastly looking skin tones. If one projector can look as good as another when they are both calibrated, but one looks a lot better if they are not, then, hey, if you aren't going to do anything, buy the one that's better out of the box. (Sorry, that was a out of control sentence.)

Overall Look and Feel of the Picture

The Sanyo: "Once we got the PLV-Z700 calibrated, it started looking really good. Skin tones turned out to be extremely good overall, although in low lit scenes, it seemed they shifted just a little bit too much to red." All together the Sanyo has a really nice final picture with a bit of "wow" to the image. It tends to look right - a good thing!

The Epson by comparison: "Really very good! The 6100 looks great on bright scenes, but, within the limit of its black level performance also does particularly well on dark scenes too."

I'll give the slightest edge to the Sanyo on skin tones. Did I mention that the Sanyo is a tad sharper? Both do well enough at shadow detail. The Epson has more "pop and wow" to the picture, not that the Sanyo is lacking. What I'm trying to say is that that the Home Cinema 6100 has a little more spectacular image. No doubt part of that is that it's a bright projector, but that's the bottom line.

Between the two, I did notice that the Sanyo looked worse when you fed them both poor standard TV content. When you want to kick on sports, the Epson does dominate. It's just got the horsepower to look brighter/better.

Below two pairs of images, in each pair, the Sanyo is first. Exposures vary a bit!