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Sanyo PLV-Z60 Home Theater Projector Review: General Performance

Posted on October 18, 2013 By Art Feierman

With those setting we came up with these rather impressive final grayscale color temp numbers:
White (100 IRE) 6642K
Light gray (80 IRE) 6475K
Medium gray (50 IRE) 6449K
Low gray (30 IRE) 6542K

Now that’s impressive, with a range of less than 200K from dark to bright! It shows up as a great, natural color balance when viewing.

Click Image to Enlarge

I had Mike do a quick calibration of Dynamic mode as well. When I say “quick” the goal isn’t perfect color balance. The goal is to maintain as much brightness as possible, but sacrificing a few lumens to make the overall color accuracy more watchable. Most projectors in brightest modes tend to be over the top on greens and or yellows. Our goal is to tame them a bit, not perfect, but still bright, and definitely more watchable. Some times that has a high cost in lumens. With the Z60, the price was small, only a 4% loss in brightness, in exchange for better color. True, there’s still a slightly too strong yellow, but it becomes very watchable for most things, especially sports!

Here are the settings from Mike’s “quick cal”:
Gain Red 15
Green 0
Blue -15
Offset Red -13
Green 0
Blue 0

I would suggest that buyers of the Z60 get a calibration disc, and do four different calibrations:

I would recommend one based on Pure Cinema, one using either Creative Cinema (preferred by me) or Brilliant Cinema, and two more for bright modes, probably based on Dynamic, one where you really, desperately need maximum lumens, so willing to compromise significantly on color accuracy, and one where you give up a few more lumens for better color, when you want both brightness and good color.

PLV-Z60 Image Noise

Very nicely done. I spotted no real issues here. No jaggies, a very good job on motion artifacts and basic background noise levels were very low.

OK, time to look at the General Performance page, which considers brightness, calibration settings, projector screen recommendations, audible noise levels, menus, remote control, and more.

Sanyo PLV-Z60 Home Theater Projector: Warranty

Of all the major manufacturers in the home theater projector space, none offers a longer warranty on their 720p projectors than Sanyo.

Sanyo provides a 3 year parts and labor warranty on their PLV-Z60 warranty, while most manufacturers offer either one year (ie. Panasonic, some Optoma projectors, Mitsubishi, some BenQ projectors, etc.) or two years (most InFocus, Epson) and so on. There are a couple of other products with three year warranties, including Epson’s now old Pro Cinema 810, but they are rare.

Sanyo, for the PLV-Z60, also provides their fast-turnaround program for projectors in for warranty repair (for all three years of warranty). Their policy says that they will turn the projector (ship it back) within 72 hours of receiving it. Sanyo actually says they actually are faster than that, turning many of them in 24 hours.

I tend to favor replacement programs, rather than repair programs, but that is pretty much personal taste, when a repair program is handled rapidly. In terms of replacement programs Epson will have a two year warranty with two year replacement program on their new Home Cinema 700, when it ships later this year, but that’s the longest I am aware of in the current 720p projector space.

Bottom Line: You won’t find a better/longer warranty for a current 720p home theater projector than the one that comes standard with the PLV-Z60!

Sanyo PLV-Z60 Home Theater Projector Review: General Performance
Sanyo PLV-Z60 Home Theater Projector: Summary, Pros and Cons