Sony SXRD VPL-VW50

With the VPL-VW50, Sony has proved that SXRD really does have the potential to become a mass market phenomenon, serving up a scintillating performance that makes the £2,700 price tag seem almost ridiculously affordable.

Good contrast ratio ; Sharp images

Doesn't take advantage of the really clever stuff

The Pearl certainly has some sparkle but £3,500 may be a bit much to shell out

Low long-term costs, Contrast ratio

Occasional dot crawl from bright images

Impressive HD features and performance at a highly competitive price point

Relatively inexpensive for a 1080p projector ; Solid colour decoding ; Reasonably bright ; Resolves every detail of 1080 resolution sources ; Highly adjustable picture ; Plenty of connectivity

Less than perfect gamma ; Poor primary and secondary colour accuracy

All things considered, the VPL-VW50 is one of the better values in 1080p front projection today. It delivers all of the resolution that a 1080p projector should, has good colour decoding, processes 1080i HD sources well, and the price is ridiculously...

Despite the few problems I’ve cited, the VPL-VW50 produced a beautiful picture, especially considering its list price of only $5000. That makes it the second lowest-priced 1080p front projector on the market (the lowest being the Mitsubishi HC5000, an...

An excellent film-like, natural image (after color correction) ; Very good menus ; Extremely quiet ; Large but attractive ; Excellent black levels and shadow detail ; Invisible pixels at any distance (beyond two feet) ; A tremendous amount of image...

Out of the box color needs work (definitely at minimum an end user calibration disk, like AVIA) ; Image is a little soft ; Not overly bright (like many 1080p projectors), and very "not bright" if the zoom lens is near or at full telephoto) ; Unmounting...

For decades Sony has enjoyed a fabulous reputation, going back to the days when the Sony Trinitron set new standars for color TV's and professional monitors. Sony is of course a huge conglomerate, and typically, deserved or not, most people still...

Standard setting blacks and contrast, Smooth, naturally detailed three-chip image, Excellent feature set and usability, Standard setting value in front projection price/performance ratio

Slightly softer image than the single-chip 1080p DLPs we've seen