This really is true 4K. That is, the same resolution defined as 4K for the Digital Cinema projectors at your local Ciluneplex. True, the standard for Blu-ray UHD is the lower 3940x2160 (exactly 2X the height and width of 1080p), so a little lower. That means, when watching a blu-ray UHD movie, there will be a little letterboxing on the left and right, nothing to be concerned with. If you do encounter true 4K content in the future, including computer oriented 4K, this Sony has that extra width on its 3 SXRD panels to do that 4196 wide without having to compress the data, and lower the overall sharpness.
As to the 4K sharpness, unless you sit pretty close to your screen (say 10 feet or less from a 100” diagonal), you will probably have trouble telling native 4K apart from various lower resolution projectors that are 4K capable.
You are more likely to notice that this Sony projector seems more natural, lacking the slight to not so slight hardness to 4K content that most others display. The point being, that the VW695ES produces a rather stunning image on both 4K and lower resolution content.
As to the 4K sharpness, unless you sit pretty close to your screen (say 10 feet or less from a 100” diagonal), you will probably have trouble telling native 4K apart from various lower resolution projectors that are 4K capable.
You are more likely to notice that this Sony projector seems more natural, lacking the slight to not so slight hardness to 4K content that most others display. The point being, that the VW295ES, like its predecessor produces a gorgeous image on both 4K and lower resolution content.
There has been conversations that Sony uses better optics in their higher end 4K projectors, but that’s limited to their two models using their Arc-F lens. Some say that the lower end models like this one, have optics that are a little soft for 4K content.
I’ll put it this way. Yes the optics can be even better, but the image looks sharp. Oh a really sharp 4K UHD projector like the BenQ HT9060 (my last review) looks pretty sharp, until compared to the Sony. The Sony is the first image.
True, I could “up” the perceived sharpness of the BenQ, to seem as sharp, but then the BenQ image seems very hard and a bit contrasty.
Inherently, Sony is natively sharper.
Yes, it’s true, with all of these projectors you can up the perceived sharpness with various controls, but when push comes to shove, this Sony can farily well resolve 4 pixels in a square layout where one is red, one green, one blue, and one white. None of the pixel shifters can do that, due to the overlap. Where the green overlaps the red pixel by 50% you get the secondary color yellow. With the Sony, you should see separate green and red – no yellow. (But you are aligning 3 LCoS panels so there is some overlap.)
That’s how it should be. In reality not even the Sony can produce separate colors, but in my testing, it does better on my image than any of the DLPs… Now we can all argue, that at normal seating distances, you can’t make out individual pixels – good point, but it’s still better to be able to resolve each pixel’s color correctly. So, sure, you can spend $40K+ on the Sony VW995ES and get superior optics. Still, no question, this Sony looks very nicely sharp on 4K content, and outstanding, of course on 1080p.
There are sharpness comparison images on the Sharpness section of the Performance page.
