Panasonic PT-AE8000 Pro Reviews

A few minor criticisms, but otherwise the PT-AT6000E is a fantastic home cinema projector

The Panasonic is an impressive 2D projector with a load of useful adjustments. With its bright, bold picture, fine detail, good contrast and black level, and the ability to do all of this on a more than comfortably large screen, it offers impressive performance. The white uniformity issue may bother some perfectionists, but it was subtle and, on most material, invisible. The Panasonic presented a bright, bold, and finely detailed 2D picture that can fill a more than comfortably large screen. Once calibrated, I definitely enjoyed my time watching it. But its white uniformity issue, while hard to spot on most program material, may well bother perfectionists. That, along with its acceptable but below-average contrast ratio for a projector in this price range with a dynamic iris, is the primary concern that keeps it from earning our Top Pick designation. Then there’s the 3D brightness issue. To be fair, most relatively affordable home theater 3D projectors have serious trouble with 3D brightness, and the PT-AE8000U is no exception. A higher-gain and/or smaller screen will help, but at some sacrifice in 2D performance. Still, if most of your 3D source material is brightly lit (that’s true of most animated features but less so of live action) and 3D is more of an occasional event in your home than a daily feast, the Panasonic’s well-defined, deeply rendered 3D images just might get the job done.

There are always trade-offs, but mostly, I think many will find that the combination of performance, placement flexibility, picture, and for 3D fans, the brightness of 3D, the AE8000 can hold its own with just about any of the projectors near its price. There are more new projectors for us to review, but, of course, that's always the case.

Panasonic have kept the chassis design of the PT-AT6000E the same as last year’s departing model, but they have also added some new tricks underneath the bonnet. Included this year is the new 220W ‘Red Rich’ lamp which comes with it a promise of brighter images, especially in 3D mode. The unit has enough source connections for even the most demanding of home cinema fans, yet not including 3D glasses at this price point is a little mean in our opinion. Set up is easy enough but we would like to see motorised lens shift controls over the rather fiddly manual joy stick control on offer here. On the plus side the zoom and focus controls are motorised and the lens memory functionality is again included for scope screen users. Improvements this year with the lens memory mean that it can be used in 3D modes, it is faster than previous versions in making the adjustments and you can also remove the ‘processing’ message from the screen. One of the major highlights of the Panasonic is the fact it can be used with a large scope screen and with no visible pixel structure thanks to smooth screen technology, it offers a truly stunning immersive cinematic performance.

Almost every year, Panasonic comes out with a new home theater projector, and each time it incorporates several significant improvements to the previous year's model. Last year's AE7000 was a groundbreaking home theater projector that, in addition to being the world's first LCD projector capable of full 1080p 3D, also raised the bar on what one should expect from 3D home cinema. Now Panasonic has introduced the PT-AE8000. The AE8000 is not as outwardly different from its predecessor as was the AE7000 from its own, but outward appearances mean very little. The AE8000 has significant improvements in all areas of picture quality, from brightness (both in 2D and 3D) to contrast (both in dynamic range and shadow detail) to color accuracy and the clarity of detail. Any one of these improvements can seem rather small, but taken in sum they constitute a major upgrade that will interest both videophiles and more casual users.