Sony VPL-HW50ES

Bottom Line

Deep blacks and terrific color make the Sony VPL-HW50ES video projector a top choice for a top-shelf home theater. It's feature rich, too, including 3D that outperforms the competition.

Image Quality

An all-around favorite. Expert praise for the Sony VPL-HW50ES is so across-the-board positive that it becomes a little monotonous. Ty Pendlebury, writing for CNET, sums up the expert impressions nicely: "Color and shadow detail were excellent and black levels were among the best I've seen in a home theater projector." Color accuracy, right out of the box, is near perfect as well.

Bill Livolsi at ProjectorCentral.com has similar praise, writing that the VPL-HW50ES's picture is "razor-sharp, crystal-clear, perfectly color-balanced, with outstanding contrast and black levels." Livolsi also lauds the wide brightness range. This projector can throw out tons of light if needed, but can also be dialed back to accommodate more modest screens in pitch-black rooms, all while sacrificing little if any of its great picture characteristics.

Livolsi observes that the VPL-HW50ES produces a "razor-sharp" picture even without detail- and edge-enhancing features -- but he also says its Reality Creation tool sharpens select areas to further bring out the native detail. The downside is more digital noise than you'll find from other home projectors, but the VPL-HW50ES has three different noise reduction features to dial the noise levels back down to normal levels.

Features

Terrific 3D. The Sony VPL-HW50ES is 3D capable, and reviewers are almost as complimentary toward that as they are to its 2D performance. The projector's enhanced refresh rate (240 Hz) helps to reduce flicker in 3D, and the available high light output helps overcome the brightness penalty 3D glasses enact. The video projector uses active technology, of course, for its 3D feature. Crosstalk (which appears as ghosting) is a downside with most displays using active 3D, but Thomas J. Norton at Home Theater magazine says that while he did find a trace of 3D ghosting "in a couple of places," it was easy to ignore. The projector can also convert 2D to 3D, but with limited effectiveness -- par for the course for that feature.

In addition to an enhanced refresh rate, the Sony VPL-HW50ES has a MotionFlow frame interpolation feature (dejudder) to smooth motion. Livolsi says that leaving the setting in low "smooths out motion in 24 frame per second content without adding any of the dreaded "digital video effect" that many people despise." He adds to reserve the high setting for content shot directly to video -- such as live sports.

Setup and Use

A cinch to use, for the most part. If you're not interested in investing in a professional calibration, setting up the Sony VPL-HW50ES is dead easy. "Just pop it into Reference mode, adjust the manual iris to taste (lower means a dimmer image but better black levels), or set it to auto... and you're done," writes Pendlebury. If you do decide to tweak the color settings on your own, the experts agree that the VPL-HW50's setup menus are easy to use and intuitive to navigate.

Finding the right spot in your room is easy as well thanks to the liberal zoom range and lens shift. But if the Sony VPL-HW50ES has a weak spot, it's the fact that its focus, lens shift and zoom controls are manually controlled. Livolsi says that the HW50's adjustment knobs "tend to stick" and "make setup kind of a pain."

Value

High price, high value. You can certainly get a perfectly adequate projector that still projects a good (though not as good) image for less money, such as the well regarded Epson Home Cinema 3020 (*Est. $1,600) . If you want the crispest image possible, however, and have or are considering creating a home theater room, experts repeatedly choose the VPL-HW50ES as a top pick.

The VPL-HW50ES does pack a few extras in the box that helps ease the sting of its price tag. Those include a spare lamp and a pair of 3D glasses. Livolsi points out that those represent roughly a $650 value. Another tick in its favor is a three year warranty, one year beyond the industry standard of two years. The lamp's estimated live span is 2,000 to 3,000 hours, but it's only covered for the usual 90 days.