Sony VPL-VW60 Home Theater Projector Review – General Performance-4

Ahh, what fun. Of all the brands out there, based on reputation, you would expect a Sony projector to do especially well, right out of the box, in terms of color accuracy.

Nothing could be further from the truth. This Sony VW60 was further off of the ideal 6500K grayscale balance, than any other home theater projector I’ve tested recently. I’d have to drop back a few months to a couple of Optoma reviews to find another projector that needed as much adjustment. I’m talking about Cinema setting, with Color Temp set to Low (default for Cinema). The default measurements were dramatically too cool, (higher color temp – favoring blue).

Let that be a warning! If all production VW60’s look like this one out of the box, then you are going either to need to spend on a professional calibrator, or at a minimum, get a calibration disk like AVIA (from most dealers). Plan C would be to copy my settings. However projectors will vary from unit to unit, but my settings should at worst, provide a rather significant improvement.

OK, let’s start with the initial performance in Cinema Mode with Color Temp set to Low. Again, ideal would be all measurements to be right at 6500K, but consider +/- 200K to be really excellent. Overall measurements of over 7000K will definitely be off. Not only is white too cool, but as we move to darker and darker grays the color temperature gets cooler and cooler.