With the Sony VPL-VW760ES, all home cinema users' dreams become more realistic. So at least the catalog data of the brand-new laser beamers promise: a crisp image, extremely rich in contrast from rich black to glistening bright white, a huge color space for rich colors combined with high dynamic range. And the whole thing almost silently and without the disadvantage that the owner would constantly throw coins into the lamp piggy bank - it's a laser.
Although the body looks similar to previous models outwardly, the Sony VW760ES builds only in about the same chassis of the smaller 4K SXRD siblings as the already tested Sony VPL VW360ES. ITheVW760ES is a chimera illusionist-end laser momodelPL-VW5000ES, which depending on the lens, costs well beyond the $60,000 and the smaller 4K projectors with conventional projector lamps; This is a little wider and heavier than the small versions if not much. Nevertheless, if you need a ceiling mount, choose something robust for the 20 kilos fighting weight of the Sony VPL-VW760ES and ever order a second man for the accident-free assembly.
The basic structure is similar to all other Sony front projectors - and that's good. He sucks his cooling air through the back of the grid and blows out the warm exhaust air in front of the lens again; This makes it possible to place it almost directly on the back wall without the risk of heat build-up.
Like other Sony models, all connections are deeply offset inside the case. Although this facilitates a concealed cable feed, the cabling itself requires slim hands and some finger acrobatics, especially when the machine is on a shelf.
Embarrassing, however, is Sony's lens protection: The dust cover is the same as in the cheap models, it is cheap and is difficult to solve with its well-designed barbs from the lens, not to mention that no other manufacturer beyond the $5,000 price range dares to deliver a loose cover. Epson and JVC have long since offered motorized flaps.
Handling with remote control and menu structure has been the same as with all Sony projectors for many years. The handheld is ergonomic and can be backlit in rich blue.
New in this model is the light source. It comes from noble ultra-short-distance models and uses a cluster of blue lasers that serve as the base color blue and a phosphor wheel; This produces a broadband, intense yellow, which is classically decomposed into dichroic mirrors on the way to the SXRD-LCoS panels for red and green. The Low Beats spectrum measurement with the high-resolution spectrometer confirms this mode of operation.
Sony only uses the laser as the source of light source marketing, albeit technically correct in its basic features. But without the phosphor wheel as a secondary light, no white would come out of the lens.
Lasers have the advantage of optically achieving maximum efficiency. After all, all the energy ends up on a single frequency. Electrically, however, they have very poor efficiency. This projector needs to suck up to 430 watts of power from the outlet for the few hundred milliwatts of optical power; This generates a lot of waste heat, which is forced out of the housing by several fans. They do that amazingly unobtrusive - even at maximum power.
Lens memory is a topic that is now widely used in high-end projectors; This is understood to mean a lens that can be electrically adjusted in terms of zoom, focus, and position, which remembers different settings and can always start again at the push of a button; This is especially common in combination with screens in CinemaScope format. You use the middle two-thirds of the screen for 4: 3 and 16: 9. If you play a CinemaScope movie, you zoom the image to full width and use the entire surface; This is also useful for the newly used in TV series increasingly 2.0: 1 format, for which one just zoomed so far that the useless black bars disappear.
As shown above, the Sony VPL-VW760ES finds these once-saved positions fast and comparatively precise. Unfortunately, he loses now and then his exact position. That can keep JVC constant but works at a slow speed compared to that.
The VW760ES is Sony's lowest-priced projector for $15,000, reproducing all the current signal types and resolutions that can come from UHD Blu-ray or game consoles, even with full bandwidth. If you need everything cheaper, buy JVC, the only one for below $10,000.
After all, the Sony VPL-VW760ES is good in terms of HDR and relevant standards. As a rule, the player and the projector should agree correctly in automatic mode; This worked smoothly in the tests; This was true for HDR10 (PQ ST.2084 EOTF); HDR referencing is also HDR10 with a fixed set clipping from 1.000Nit as well as Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) for future HDR-TV broadcasts.
Switching between the standard color spaces, BT.709 and BT.2020, also worked without stress. It's a pity that the maximum amount of saturated green drifted towards yellow in the DCI-P3 range of the BT.2020 color space (the most common for HDR films today).
In the traditional video standard, the projector did its job properly. There was little fine-tuning in the presets reference, or the user needed a homogeneous, luminous image. Small blemishes were the non-correctable supersaturated mid-reds and greens in the tester.
A major flaw is HDR rendering too deep black and overdriving white. Only after significant correction of shadow details from the rich black and a differentiation beyond 1,000 Nit no one needs; the latter is easy to achieve with "Contrast HDR" controls.
Then the laser makes a very regular image, which is not good for projection because the standard is intended for TVs in a lighted room. Here you can help with the "contrast enhancement" function, which raises the average tone values in three steps. That worked fine; I had injected myself during the tests on the middle level. The conjured - despite 3.5m CinemaScope with gain-weak, acoustically transparent screen and set to 100% power laser - so much color and radiance in the movies that I could not suppress a satisfied grin.
On board, the Sony VPL-VW760ES has clever image enhancers from Sony. For example, the scaler, with its very artifact-poor re-sharpening "realism," which draws such crisp details with the finest brushstrokes when feeding full HD signals with the correct dosage, that real 4K / UHD signals have to strain already to show real more information.
In contrast, soft transitions outperform banding and solarization, which results from the under-quantization of only 8 bits in conventional video and television; This looks like a nine or 10-bit resolution. This feature is also available for 3D for the first time.
In February, I swapped the old reference Sony VPL-VW300 for the tested JVC DLA-X7900, which now controls all signal types and resolutions and is not unlike the VW760ES from the datasheet. Only in still photos could be a clear projection for the native 4K resolving Sony against the e-Shift technology of the JVC. In the moving film image, you notice nothing of it.
A clear advantage goes to the laser light source of the Sony, not only because of the life and longer brightness but especially in terms of image quietness; This is especially noticeable in large bright areas, which looked like the Sony and the JVC painted them. The peace and smoothing made Sony synonymous with a 3D playback advantage. Only the 3D image is comparatively dark, as with all Sony 4K models.
One point goes to the JVC regarding the native black, with the Sony hardly worse. The top brightness is close to the Sony, again with the note that it will last longer. And thanks to the ingenious scalers, synonymous comparison with native playback of satellite TV with 720p or 1080i and Blu-ray Disc with 1080p crystal clear in terms of image sharpness in favor of the Sony.
A bargain is the Sony VPL-VW760ES for almost $15,000, certainly not. But it offers, at the highest level, a pleasantly balanced package of important properties. The laser light source is persistent and bright, at the same time pleasantly calm, and guarantees relaxed eyes. Combined with the sharp lens and the clever signal processing (keyword "realism"), the 4K panels deliver crisp, bright images and deep black. The Sony is the perfect projector for frequent gazers who want to use their cinema for daily television and enjoy maximum quality without constantly squinting at the lamp's timepiece; An all-rounder, high-end level Projector.
