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PROJECTORS
If you are looking for cinematic scale in your home set-up, you really need one of these impressive 4K projectors
The projector’s laser lighting is rated to deliver a peak 2000 lumens
Image credit: Sony
Sony VPL-XW5000ES £4999
This is the cheapest truly native 4K laser projector the home cinema world has yet seen. There are similarly priced DLP laser projectors that use ‘double flashing’ tech to achieve a 4K image, or pixel-shifting technology that achieves a 4K effect, but none carries a native 3840x2160 pixel count as this Sony does. To illustrate just how surprisingly cheap this projector is, stepping up to its mid-range XW7000ES native 4K sibling will set you back £14,990.
Despite its price, it still benefits from Sony’s X1 Ultimate processing, previously available only on its flagship projector. The X1 Ultimate platform powers digital contrast optimisation, object-based HDR remastering, object-based resolution enhancement, enhanced upscaling, clarityboosting Reality Creation and, perhaps the most important element of the projector’s processing system, the Dynamic HDR Enhancer. This incredibly clever system analyses incoming content so that it can pick out relatively bright highlights and increase their intensity without damaging or changing other elements of the picture.
The XW5000ES’s Triluminos Pro colour engine is claimed to reach as much as 95 per cent of the digital cinema world’s DCI-P3 colour gamut, and an IMAX Enhanced mode is also on board. The XW5000ES’s laser lighting is rated to deliver a peak light output of 2000 lumens, enough potentially to transform picture quality with HDR sources.
This extra light combines with a trio of 0.61-inch SXRD chips, the smallest Sony has ever managed to produce. As well as potentially leading to sharper, more densely detailed pictures, these new chips are apparently more reflective and deliver a more uniform reflective surface than their predecessors – factors that could also enhance contrast, colour accuracy and colour gradations
The X1 Ultimate processor is actually phenomenally effective by the standards of a projection world that traditionally feels miles behind TVs when it comes to image processing. The XW5000ES’s pictures look so good right out of the box that it’s hard to know where to start.