Sony VPL-VW95ES Projector – Image Quality

Posted on July 28, 2013 By Art Feierman

All of the Sony VPL-VW95ES screen image photos below are from either Blu-ray or HDTV source material.

In truth, virtually all projectors, including this VPL-VW95ES, will look a lot better projecting on to your screen, than in these pictures. Although the images can reveal some things and support some points I make, they are mostly for “entertainment” for the following reasons:

These Sony VPL-VW95ES projector images come to you, through a Canon 60D dSLR camera, software, browsers, your computer’s graphic card, and even your monitor, all with their own color and contrast inaccuracies. There are color shifts, saturation differences, etc. Take them all, “with a grain (no, make that a kilo) of salt”.

For this series of photos, I found that the VPL-VW95ES images end up with a slight yellowish pink? caste. Last year I reported yellow-orange. The real, projected image definitely looks more natural.

The images of the Sony VPL-VW95ES are provided to support the commentary, but keep in mind all these major limitations when trying to compare images from the VPL-VW95ES with other home theater projectors, when it comes to color accuracy.

VPL-VW95ES "Out of the Box" Picture Quality

There are a lot of different preset modes, but the ones closest to an ideal 6500K are all up around 7000K when measuring white. As such, the image on modes like Cinema 3 which we based “best” mode on, are a touch cool. All considered, the general color and skin tones in several modes are really good for right out of the box.

One thing of note, is the Dynamic mode. Interestingly, the default is extremely cool – over 10,000K. Yet by using Color Temp 5 instead of its default setting, it not only improves the “brightest” mode’s color, but it also yields an extra 10% brightness.

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

Click Image to Enlarge

VPL-VW95ES Projector - Flesh Tones

The flesh tones of the VW95ES projector are one of its great strengths. Perhaps it’s the accurate color gamut Mike has pointed out, but the Sony does really great on skin tones on bright scenes. Running the Sony side by side against the lower cost Epson Home Cinema 5010, resulted in the Epson looking really good, but the Sony was just more natural.

On the other hand, in darker scenes, the skin tones are picking up a touch too much red, which I believe ties to the redish coloring of the Sony’s idea of pure black. As described elsewhere, this seems to be a background problem, and those tend to be gone by the time full production versions are hitting the street. Note, most projectors have some slight shift in their backgrounds from neutral black, including, sometimes, shifting from one color to another – such as from red to blue – going from left to right of a screen. Thus, it’s not unusual, but the significant amount here, will likely, mostly or completely, go away. We shall see.