Sony VPL-HW50ES Pro Reviews

The Sony VPL-HW50ES costs more than most TVs, but for a fantastic big-screen cinema experience in the home it's a very good value.

Combine brightness with the amazingly deep black levelsits dynamic iris offers, with minimum side effects, together with near spot-on post-calibration color and compelling 3D, and you have a projector that can compete with anything else in its price range. And unless you’re trying to fill a 20-foot screen, it could well challenge models that cost more. Much more. The VPL-HW50ES offers a lot for the money, and if you’re shopping in this price range, it definitely deserves a very close look. Recommended without reservations.

We're big fans of Sony's Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD) Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) technology, so couldn't wait to get our hands on its high-end 3D projector, the VPL-HW50ES. Rather than having to shine light through LCD panels inside the projector, SXRD projectors use reflective LCD panels. These are more akin with DLP technology, helping to increase contrast and colour vibrancy. With three SXRD panels (one each for red, green and blue) inside the HW50ES, we were keen to find out what this projector was capable of.

There's no mistaking the VPL-HW50ES's pedigree, with its attractive curves and styling, it could only be a Sony product. Despite its price point, the build quality is excellent, the remote well designed and the connections adequate. It also comes with two pairs of active shutter glasses included and the new design is a great success, adding to the 3D experience. Our only complaint is that the lens controls are manual, which makes focussing the HW50 tricky and precludes the addition of a lens memory function. Aside from the manual lens focus, set up is very straightforward and the menu system is concise, well labelled and easy to navigate. The HW50 has a reasonable set of features with only the location of the 3D menu worth complaining about. There are a number of preset picture modes, including two that are designed for use in a well-lit environment. However the Reference picture mode is the best, offering a genuinely impressive level of accuracy out-of-the-box. There are calibration controls to help fine tune this performance and we're glad to see that RCP (Real Colour Processing) has been improved from last year.