Sanyo PLV-Z2000 Home Theater Projector Review - General Performance-5

Posted on October 1, 2007 by Art Feierman

Living Room: At 324 lumens, this mode, the best of TV/HDTV viewing modes, was, surprisingly, not very bright.

Dynamic: At 487 lumens, this mode, was definitely very cool (bluish) as is typical of modes designed to cut through ambient light. Watchability was respectable, and can be improved with little loss of brightness

Vivid: This is the brightest mode of the PLV-Z2000, and its ugliest. I measured 601 lumens, but could never stand to watch anything on it. With some good adjustments, this could probably be turned into something significantly more watchable, without giving up more than maybe 50 or so lumens.

Even in full wide angle zoom, the projector never got close to its claimed 1200 lumens. Tsk, Tsk. (Of course, if it did, it would be brighter than average, not dimmer.)

I should note, that several of the dynamic or transient features I've previously mentioned, do impact brightness, and will increase the lumen output, but never drastically.

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To give you a good idea of the relative brightnesses of the three movie modes, here is the same image photographed at the same exposure for all three. I started with Brilliant Cinema, so the other two look much darker

PLV-Z2000 Projector - Light Leakage

Excellent. Never noticed any stray light coming out the front, through the lens. There is a tiny amount of light coming out of the venting on the left side (looking from the front) of the projector. No issues.

Sanyo PLV-Z2000 Audible Noise Levels

Ahh, LCD projectors. For the most part, they are much quieter than the DLP competition, and the Z2000 is no exception (Epson's have, in the past been the noisiest of the LCD models).

The Sanyo is about as quiet as projectors get. Their claim of 19 db, in low lamp mode, rivals the Mitsubishi HC6000, and is much quieter than anything else out there. In full lamp power, the PLV-Z2000 is still pretty quiet, in fact about as quiet as almost any DLP projector in low power mode. Bottom line - no worries here.

PLV-Z2000 Projector Screen Recommendations

I really like a high contrast light gray screen to complement the PLV-Z2000 home theater projector. Problem is, the projector has few lumens to spare. Since my own HC gray is a Stewart Firehawk G3, which does high contrast gray differently than other less expensive screens, it has the tendency to make the projector seem brighter than other "similar" type screens. (Most gray screens claim gain (brightness factors) of 0.6 to 0.9 gain, while the Firehawk claims 1.3 gain).

What my Firehawk screen brings to the party is deeper blacks, which are much appreciated. As I've said, the black levels of the Sanyo are about average, and this screen definitely helps. For those with tighter budgets for screens, you'll have to weigh improving black levels against extra brightness. Watching at about 100" diagonal on my 106" Carada Brilliant White, (1.4 claimed gain), I found the blacks to be just a bit too gray. You are aware of the "grayness" of the letterbox blacks.