Sony VPL-HW55ES Projector: Summary

2D Brightness:  With almost 1000 lumens calibrated, this is the brightest serious projector in its class, when considering projectors when performing at their best.    What’s a serious projector?  One an enthusiast will love, which in this case, means at least really good picture quality, including reasonably accurate color, black level performance that’s at least “ultra-high contrast”, and no serious issues.

In fact with all that brightness, some folk with smaller screens, typically less than 100″ diagonal, or those with high gain screens, may find this Sony to be too bright, in calibrated mode, when viewing in a darkened theater.  No problem.  Sony’s dynamic iris solution is ideal for handling that.  In normal auto operation bright scenes are as bright as without the iris on, but you can lower the maximum brightness of the iris, and still allow the iris to operate dynamically for those great blacks.  Thus you can easily make the projector less than half that bright, or anywhere in between.

Maximum brightness:  Now then, there are times you want all the lumens.  The HW55ES doesn’t have that many more good looking lumens under the hood, but the 1300 lumen range is still a easily visible increase in brightness over “best” mode.  Of the brightest modes (if not adjusted), I prefer Bright Cinema over Bright TV or Game mode, even for my sports viewing.

It’s your call, choose the “brightest” mode you like best.  It’s when you want to be a perfectionist that you select the “best” mode (Reference), or if you haven’t calibrated, try our settings .