Sony VPL-VW290 schwarz

The Sony VPL-290ES, or 325ES as it’s known in North America, is a tremendous home theatre projector. It’ll deliver an incredibly detailed image from its native 4k DCI panels, with very respectable black levels, natural and accurate colours, and easy setup with motorised focus, zoom and lens shift. Sony’s dynamic tone mapping does a surprisingly good job with HDR content with the limited range of a projector, but for me the real result is how good the 290 looks out-the-box in its Reference preset with standard dynamic range and the lamp set to low to minimise fan noise and maximise life. In fact this is how I ended up using it and even after a month I was always delighted by the picture. It also does a great job upscaling 1080p HD content, but feed it native 4k and you’ll really see the details pop. On the downside, it’s louder than I’d like for my own installation, and more than I personally wanted to spend on a projector without a laser light source, but every time I watched it I was completely immersed, as much by the lack of artefacts as for the detailed and vibrant image. So with prices refusing to fall on these things, I’m just going to have to save up and make the investment.