Sharp XV-Z3000 Projector Review - General Performance

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Art Feierman

XV-Z3000 Projector Brightness

This is perhaps the brightest of the DLP projectors that can do really impressive black levels. While some of the projectors, like the Optoma HD70, and HD72 and Mitsubishi's HD1000U have plenty of lumens, they also have clear filters on their color wheels, which tends to trade off black levels for more brightness. It is brighter, however than the typical Darkchip3 projectors like my BenQ PE-8720 or Optoma's HD7100, both with much better black levels than the other projectors just mentioned. (The XV-Z3000, in my opinion, actually does blacker blacks than the Optoma HD7100.

Tthe XV-Z3000 is one of the brightest home theater projectors out there. Here's how it measured.

For most of my viewing and measurements, I selected the Movie 2 mode, so we'll start there.

With the lamp set to eco mode, and the Iris set to High Contrast (best), the XV-Z3000 puts out a not particularly bright 285 lumens.

But just switch the projector's Iris to Medium Mode (which is the way I had it set for all most all of my movie viewing), and lumen output jumps to a very respectable 515 lumens, in line with most of the other 720p DLP projectors just mentioned. And for more horsepower, for larger screens, etc, High Brightness on the Iris takes lumen output to a very bright 907 lumens. That's serious output considering we're still in Movie 2 mode.

By the way, if noise is not an issue for you, kick the lamp up to full power, and the same High Brightness mode kicks out 1085 lumens...

Below I'll provide more lumens for the various other preset modes, but the next most important one, in my opinion, is Dynamic. This takes you to the other end of the brightness spectrum, when you can sacrifice some image quality, for that football game with moderate room lighting. I must note too, that "Dynamic" modes with most projectors tend to have color balances that are pretty visibly off, especially with greens pushed to get out more lumens.

Not so the XV-Z3000, which looked really good. I have no doubt I could push green and other aspects and get another200 more lumens than the 1489 lumens measured (lamp on full), although I didn't try. With most others, by the time you get "Dynamic" under control (fix the color balance a bit), you tend to lose 10-15% of best brightness.

My conclusion is that I really can't think of any other DLP projectors or LCD ones for that matter in the price range, that can offer both plenty of brightness when needed, and excellent black levels when the room is dark. It's a hard combination to beat.

Some of the measurements for the other Pre-set modes (all with lamp at full power so, reduce by about 16% for eco-mode), and with the Iris in the High Brightness Mode setting:


Dynamic	1489 lumens
Movie 1	1067 lumens
Natural	1116 lumens
Standard	891 lumens

You can estimate how those modes perform with other Iris settings by interpolating from the more complete numbers provided in Movie 2 mode above.

For your consideration, here are three images that demonstrate the overall brightness differences between the 3 Iris modes. All three are shot with the same exposure, so the Medium and High Contrast ones look very dark, compared to High Brightness.