Sony VPLVW285ES 4K HDR Home Theater Video Projector (2017 model)

Product Specifications

• Screen Size Range: 42-85 inches from 8 feet; 62-126 inches from 12 feet, 83-167 inches from 16 feet
• Resolution: Full 4K (4096 x 2160)
• White Brightness: 1500 Lumens; Color Brightness: 1500 Lumens; Calibrated Brightness (cinema 1 mode): N/A
• Contrast Ratio: N/A; Lens Shift: Vertical +85%/- 80%; Horizontal +/- 31%
• Warranty: 3 Year Limited
• Lamp Life: 6,000 hours

• Connectivity: HDMI (2)

  Product Description

Enjoy up to 200 inches in true 4K HDR in any room. With more than four times the resolution of Full HD, 4K delivers a picture that’s so incredibly lifelike, it’s like being in the scene or at the game. Experience the latest HDR content with an extremely wide contrast range and a greater volume of colors.

Product Reviews

Fantastic performance for the price

I haven’t had a ton of time to play with this yet (I’ve had it a week), but it’s looked stunningly good with almost everything I’ve thrown at it (which is pretty much everything except 3D; still need to test that). Seeing the previous review, I put an HDR disk in last night to test that, and I saw no banding. The only two things I’ve tried that haven’t looked fabulous were Labyrinth in 4k (it might well have just been revealing flaws in the source material, as stuff like the credits looked amazingly sharp, but much of the movie itself looked noisy. Like a photo taken with too high an ISO for the camera, if that means anything to you. It could be that that was an artifact of how they had to do some of the special effects, back then; I don’t know) and TV when upscaled from 720p. The latter actually looked better than I’d’ve thought possible on static stuff (graphics related to stats of the game I was watching, for instance), but the game itself was big step down. Again, though, that might have been the fault of the source material. Or a weakness in the scaler in my receiver, possibly.Anyway, I have no complaints with it, as of now. I’ll update after watching some 3D material.

cannot do HDR properly

I’ve been anticipating the release of a $5,000 full UHD HDR projector for years. I’ve had the 665ES for almost 2 years and been pleased with the SDR video quality. The 665 was advertised as having HDR so much to my disappointment, when I plugged in a new 4K  TV the projector couldn’t do the HDR unless I stepped down the refresh to 24hz to handle its 10-bit signal, which of course was unacceptable. I have 4 of them in 2 different homes. So when the 285 came out, I ordered 4 just so I could get the best quality from my 4K Apple TVs and Oppo 205 UHD HDR blu-ray player. I’ve had enough experience with Sony to trust that the 285 would be good, especially after reading the Projector Central review which was glowing. My four 665ES units would be going on eBay. Got the first 285 in last week and hooked it up to the  TV and turned on 10-bit HDR. Horrible banding issues in the menu on any graphical display of gradient color. Clearly visible and annoying in all content, which was eliminated only by switching the  TV back to SDR. Spent an entire day checking settings and changing them and searching forums. No dice. Watched latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery (on the CBS app only available in SDR) while in HDR mode on the  TV and it looked dark and too contrasty even after tweaking settings. Looked at it again in SDR mode and it looked fine. You’re not supposed to have to switch between SDR and HDR mode on the  TV. It’s supposed to do that conversion on the fly. Watched Saturday Night Live (1080i) on a TiVo Bolt in SDR connected to the projector at 4K resolution, and that looked fine. Watched the same show from Hulu on the  TV connected to the projector via HDR and it looked darker and more contrasty with the banding problem in gradated areas like graphics and logos. Switched the  TV to SDR mode and it looked fine. It appears the projector is displaying 8-bit color instead of 10-bit when the incoming HDR signal is above 30hz.If you don’t know what banding is, there are only a limited amount of colors, so if you were to look at a sunset, for example, you would see only a few different colors spread across the screen in horizontal bands instead of a smooth gradual transition from bright to dark.So the problem is with how this projector handles 10-bit 60hz HDR. Serious blunder on Sony’s part. This projector is defective and should be recalled unless a patch can be made via the Ethernet port.READ MORE

Beautiful picture

This is the third projector I’ve owned and by far the best. I have a 130” 16x9 acoustically transparent screen that I’m sitting eleven feet from. The projector is ceiling mounted and placed around 14‘8“ away. The VW285ES does a great job displaying 1080P, 4K and 4K HDR. It has really nice colors reaching around 65% of REC 2020 and pretty good black levels. I mostly watch 4k HDR blu-ray disc using a oppo 203 but I also have amazon fire TV and Netflix both look really good. In my humble opinion I’d easily say that most people would be blown away with this projector. The people that might be disappointed with this unit is hard-core gamers and anyone trying to display 4K HDR at 60 HZ because is causing banding.

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