Sony VPL-VW1000ES Projector – Image Quality

Posted on July 26, 2013 By Art Feierman

VPL-VW1000ES "Out of the Box" Picture Quality

From a color accuracy standpoint, this Sony is no better than its less expensive siblings, the $7K VW95ES and the $3500 HW30ES. Nor is it worse. In reality, the VPL-VW1000ES projector in its best “Out of the Box” mode looks very good, but as with the other Sony projectors, the picture is a touch cool – around 7000K instead of 6500K. Mind you, that’s not bad, it’s probably more accurate than most LCDTV’s offer in their “best” modes. Skin tones etc., look very good, just it’s just a touch strong on blues, especially in the brighter IREs. However, green is in proper balance, so color does look natural and good.

Check out our recommended settings like Brightness, Color, etc. on the Calibration page of this review.

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VPL-VW1000ES Projector - Flesh Tones

Although the VW1000ES does not calibrate as perfectly as some other projectors, the end result is extremely good. The projector finishes calibration with all but the extremes (100 IRE – white), and (20 IRE – lowest gray we can measure) being about dead on. White (100 IRE) remained just a tiny bit cool (6814K) while 20 IRE has an even slighter shift toward red (6256K).

You really don’t notice those shifts – the picture just looks great. I’ll even mention that the slight red in the darkest areas seems to have pretty much vanished in the 150+ hours since Mike calibrated the new lamp (not unusual). I wouldn’t be surprised if 20 now read closer to 6500K if we remeasured.

None of that matters, only the picture quality does, and skin tones in particular look very natural, one of those statements that I tend to keep repeating when describing Sony projectors.

It’s somewhat “interesting” because, as someone who’s been in the industry for many decades, I tend to think that Sony still, to some degree, lives on its reputation established with the Sony Trinitron picture tube and the TVs developed between the 60’s and 70’s. Truth is, that may still be the case, but, it’s not particularly relevant to LCDTVs and projectors, The bottom line is that regardless of where Sony gets its rep, this projector has great, natural looking skin tones, and, thanks to the resolution, more detail in those close ups of faces, such as found in some of these images.