Sony VPL-VW600ES 4K Projector: Hardware Tour 2

The Sony VW600ES comes with a typical Sony remote.  It’s long, and relatively narrow, has a curved back so it fits the hand well.  Sony varies the buttons slightly from projector to projector so here goes, from the top.

Top right has the green power button.  It’s the usual:  Press once to power up (which takes about a minute), press twice to power off.  Next to it is the input button, which by pressing more than once toggles you though the choices.   To it’s left is the backlight button.  The Sony remote control – RM-PJ24 – has a blue led backlight.  Personally, I think it could be a little brighter, but with a little squinting, I can read the text on the buttons in a fully darkened room.

Below those buttons is a matrix of three rows by three, which serve up the eight pre-set color (picture) modes, and the User mode.

Underneath those, there are three larger buttons across, for lens control.  From the left is Power Focus, then Power Zoom, and Power Lens Shift.  They all work in conjunction with the up/down/left/right navigation buttons.

Speaking of the navigation buttons, the four arrow keys, arranged in a round formation, surround an enter button in the middle.  Three curved buttons are outside of the navigation ones.   They are Position – which is the Lens Memory area, Reset (don’t worry, you have to confirm before Reset works, and the one at the bottom is  the Menu button.

Further down the remote, is another 3 x 3 matrix of buttons. This time the buttons provide dirt access to the key feature menus.  From top left to right, then 2nd, 3rd rows:

Aspect Ratio, MotionFlow, and 3D

Color Space, Color Temp, and Reality Creation

Gamma Correction, Contrast Enhancer, and Advanced (dynamic) Iris.

We’re almost done, with only three left, and those are each rocker buttons, from the left:

Sharpness (+/-), Brightness (+/-), and Contrast (+/-).

That’s it.  Good remote, very good range.  My only two complaints – already mentioned is that the blue backlight could be slightly brighter.  The other is that I do prefer having separate buttons for the different inputs.  Neither is a serious complaint.

The 4K server is round, almost one foot diameter.  And it’s part of the Soy VW600ES projector package.  It stands about three inches tall.  There is no keyboard or display, instead Sony supplies one of their Android tablets.

The Sony 4K Media Player – the FMP-X1, has a power switch, USB and an SD card slot, along with indicator lights for network and hard drive, along the front and sides.  The back has a recessed area with HDMI outputs, and a jack to plug in the DC power from the included power brick.  If I have a complaint, there’s no separate Digital Audio Output, which would come in handy for a lot of setup.

In my theater, as an example, I had to output HDMI from the Media Player to the switcher, so I could extract the digital audio output and feed it directly into my audio system.  Well, if you can afford this projector, you can certainly afford a couple of low cost switch boxes if needed.  The only concern is to make sure the switcher can handle the 4K HDMI.  Ultimately we want HDMI 2.0.

I’ll get back to you on using the tablet.  I’ve been on vacation writing up most of this review, and I want to spend some more time, and have the tablet and media player in front of me when I go into some detail.  The Sony tablet itself has a very large screen.  It uses wifi to talk to the media player.