Sony’s new laser projector is a stunner at the price
The VPL-XW5000ES is a watershed moment for not just Sony’s projection business but for home cinema in general. Why? Because it’s the cheapest truly native 4K laser projector the home cinema world has ever seen.
The word ‘native’ is doing some heavy lifting there, to be clear. There are a number of DLP laser projectors priced lower than the Sony that would claim, with the support of the Consumer Technology Association in the US, to be 4K projectors; but they have to use ‘double flashing’ technology to achieve a 4K image rather than carrying native 3840x2160 arrays of DLP’s digital mirror devices.
There are also LCD projectors, such as Epson’s EH-LS12000B, that use pixelshifting technology applied to native Full HD chipsets to create a 4K effect (though this is not endorsed as real 4K by the CTA). Sony’s VPL-XW5000ES, though, actually carries a real 4K 3840x2160 pixel count on its new 0.61-inch SXRD imaging chips.
Prior to the XW5000ES, Sony’s entry-level SXRD 4K projectors – such as last year’s VW290ES – have relied on lamp rather than laser technology. Moving to laser, though, means no longer having to put up with either the inconvenience and ongoing costs associated with having to replace lamps every few thousand hours of use, or the relatively rapid degradation in brightness that lamps suffer.
Inevitably, though, bringing laser lighting down to a much cheaper price than Sony has ever managed before is going to come with a few performance and specification strings attached. So we hope these compromises aren’t enough
