Viewsonic Pro9000 Projector Picture Quality

Viewsonic Pro9000 Out of the Box Picture Quality

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Viewsonic provides a lot of preset modes.  None of them, however look especially excellent.  A couple are pretty good.  I found Sports in particular to have some good pop and my football games looked pretty good!

We reviewed this projector, with a pre-production sample provided.  Due to color handling issues we asked for a full production projector once they started shipping to see if the projector would calibrate better.  We received a full production Pro9000 projector after this review was written.  While it addressed a couple of previously spotted problems we would call flaws typical of pre-production projectors, we found the full production version still weak when it came to calibrated color.

This projector has several things going for it, but it still cannot deliver the quality color accuracy one would expect from any projector in its price range.  For a respectable "brightest mode" you'll have to drop down from Bright mode to one of the others, giving up a good third of maximum brightness.  That would seem to be the trade-off relative to the very high cost of providing an LED/Laser light source.

Overall, there are a number of watchable modes, but, greatness does not exist in this pre-production version.  Bright scenes - overall, tend to have a yellow green shift while red is more prevelent in dark scenes.  The projector does look better on darker scenes than really bright ones.  If I had to pick just one mode to use, without adjustment, it would be Sports.

Gamma settings have a big effect on that, and, also seem to impact color balance (surprising, but it is, what it is.)

Some gamma modes give you apparent better looking colors and more pop than others. Below are a series of photos demonstrating the impact of six of the eight Gamma choices, the exposures are the same for all:

Gamma 6 (last one down) seems, for example to have more red content.  Note that in the orange cooler on the sidelines, but perhaps better, notice the grays of the menus, definitely more red in the gray on # 6.

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Before we go further, here's our usual warning about the accuracy of the photos we present to you:

About these photo images: The images in this review can give you a very good idea of the Pro9000 picture quality, but with some reservations. First, as with all other projectors, when you get this Viewsonic projector home, it is going to look a lot better than the images. In general though, there is noticeable shifting of color and dynamics as the process goes from the projected image, to my 60D Canon dSLR, though Photoshop (for resizing, cropping), massive jpg compressing them for web, your graphics card in your computer, and your display's own lower contrast, and color shifts.

It's almost amazing the pictures look this good, all considered. Nonetheless, they do provide you with a very good representation, just not a dead on one suitable for comparing the exact color balance of different projectors.

Please take these images with a "grain of salt" (or maybe a kilo?) On the bright side, images designed to show black levels and shadow detail can be effective when compared to other projector's images.