Sony VPL-EW435 Business and Education Projector Review – Hardware 2

Sony VPL-EW435 Business and Education Projector Review – Hardware 2: The Control Panel, The Remote Control, The Menus

The Sony VPL-EW435’s control panel is weird! It’s located at the back of the projector, and consists of five buttons. When facing the back, the buttons go as follows: Power, Input, Menu, Enter, and ECO Mode. The first thing I noticed is that the Enter button looks totally strange, and there are no directional arrow keys to navigate the menus. Odd!

Upon closer investigation, the Enter button is actually a toggle switch contained within a recessed square, with tiny arrows embossed on each side of the square. This is completely bizarre. It’s easy enough to use, once you’ve figured out what you’re looking at, but I’d still opt to use the remote control during setup rather than this control panel.

Either way, with the projector ceiling mounted, it is highly unlikely that you’ll ever touch the control panel after installation, as it would be impractical. The remote, or remote control app, will be the teacher or presenter’s best friend. But more about that in the section below!

The EW435’s remote is also an odd little fellow. Not quite a credit card remote, not quite full sized, the Sony’s remote control is as simplistic as the projector it belongs to. Besides its small size and modest layout, I noticed that at least its buttons are normal. That is, they’re the nice, soft rubber we’ve become so accustomed to, and not those sad little plastic ones seen on credit card type remotes.

There are four sections of the remote. Starting with the top left, there is an Input button, APA, ECO Mode, and a green Power button on the far right, slightly out of line with the other three buttons. The section below has the Menu button opposite the Reset button, with the four directional arrow keys surrounding an Enter button just below. Under that and to the left, is the Return button for exiting the menus.

Three buttons live below that section, and relate to Aspect, Keystone, and Pattern. The last section has stacked buttons for D Zoom – that’s digital zoom – +/-, and Volume next to that, +/-. Next to that is the Freeze button, allowing you to freeze on a frame instead of pausing the content. To the far right, also stacked, are the Blank and Muting buttons. That’s it. Not too complex, but it’s got everything you need – if not, use their highly capable app, mentioned on the Special Features page.

That does it for our tour of the Sony VPL-EW435’s hardware! Next up is our discussion of the projector’s picture and sound quality.