Sony VPL-VW70 - Image Quality - 4

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Art Feierman

The Dark Knight has some very bright areas, but there are lots of shadow details in the mountain and in the streets and buildings of Hong Kong. It has been overexposed a bit to make hunting dark shadow details a bit easier.

In the image below, from Aeon Flux, look at the shadow details in the form of the table surface, shadows on the table, and dark areas in the foods and around them.

VPL-VW70 Bottom Line: Shadow details

The VPL-VW70 truly does a really good job, it manages to reveal lots of very dark details. Almost all the darkest details are there, but, may be so dark, that they are difficult to see when just enjoying content.

No issue at all, with the shadow detail at all!

The image below is another good one for looking at shadow details, and can be found on most recent reviews. Look to the details in the dark area in the upper right, and, if comparing to other projectors, whether that area is more or less vibrant. Sometimes the details may be there, but the area can look pretty flat.

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Sony VPL-VW70 Overall Color & Picture Quality

The VW70 is a well balanced projector. The combination of excellent black levels and really good color combine to produce a great looking image. Skin tones are some of the best we've seen.

Bright scenes are very dynamic looking, if there's a downside, dark scenes are slightly compressed due to the operation of the dynamic iris. While this is nothing new to dynamic irises, it is worthy of note, because the VW70 definitely has to compete head to head with two excellent projectors that can match or beat its black level performance - without the use of a dynamic iris and the resulting slight compression of dynamic range.

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you'll find a mix of additional images to show off the VPL-VW70.

Before we get to those, here are several side-by-side photos of the VW70 (left) compared to the JVC DLA-RS20 (right). The JVC RS20 is one of the VW70's closest (and fiercest) competitors. As mentioned before, the two projectors were setup so that overall brightness was the same on brighter scenes. As a result, in the darker scenes, you can spot some of that dynamic range compression. You'll see blacks and near blacks that are very similar in brightness on those dark scenes, but when you look at the brightest parts of the image, the JVC is brighter. This really isn't something you'd likely be aware of without the side-by-side viewing, but still, it's there: