Review: Sanyo PLV-Z5 - Can Sanyo's latest LCD projector keep up with InFocus' high standards?
The propaganda
Sanyo’s annual LCD projector update is always a good reason to get excited as the company reveals the latest upgrades to its always excellent PLV-Z range. Traditionally this involves a few feature upgrades and a number of tweaks to the imaging technologies, but a healthy reliance on the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix’ school of thought.
The LCD technology sported in this latest model consists of three 0.7in PolySilicon LCDs sporting a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution which just puts it into the HD Ready camp. To conform to this, the connectivity options include two HDMI outputs and two component connections. Other specs are pretty impressive and include a claimed contrast ratio of 10,000:1, brightness of 1100 ANSI lumens and a price tag of below £1,500.
The good
Before I bang on about picture quality, the PLV-Z5 does offer one particularly interesting and useful feature that is worth mentioning. Many LCDs use an automatic iris on the lens to regulate the amount of light being output so you can achieve deeper black levels. The problem with this is that you often struggle to get a balance between decent black levels and keeping other on screen colours looking nice and bright. Generally the picture quality gets dulled down as a result. The Z5’s solution to this problem is to incorporate a second iris, this one on the lamp itself, which gives it an much wider range of lumens output.
And the results are pretty encouraging too – darker scenes do offer a decent level of blackness but still maintaining shadow details and some reasonably strong on screen colours. We still have some gripes, but it is fair to say it just about outperforms the efforts we’ve seen on similarly priced rivals like the InFocus IN76.
The rest of the picture quality lives up to everything we’ve come to expect from Sanyo’s PLV-Z range over the years. The lack of video noise is immediately striking and the projector manages to avoid motion dithering and rainbowing effects that afflict some rival DLP projectors. Colour saturation is impressive too, but beware that it takes some amount of tweaking to get it to perform at its best.
The bad
Although we were mostly impressed by the results of the double iris system, it wasn’t particularly easy to set up correctly. It took some amount of fiddling with each one’s setting until we struck the best balance between black levels, shadow detail and colour brightness. This obviously won’t be much of a problem for purists, but anyone looking for a more straightforward out-of-the-box experience will probably do better with a cheaper alternative.
We also felt that picture sharpness could have been better. Strangely, researching other website’s opinions on the quality of image sharpness reveals a bit more of an enthusiastic reaction, so it is possible this was merely an issue with our review unit. Images certainly looked HD – don’t get me wrong – but it was felt that there could have been more of that stunning HD clarity we’ve come to expect from rival LCD projectors.
Geek Sheet
1366 x 768 pixels resolution
Double iris system
Contrast: 10,000:1
Brightness: 1100 ANSI Lumens
Supported video formats: 480i/p, 576i/p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p 50/60
Dimensions: 381 x 127 x 305mm
Weight: 5kg
Inputs: 2 x HDMI, 2 x component video, D-Sub PC input, S-Video, Composite video, RS-232
Other features: Vertical and horizontal image shift; Overscan adjust; 22db noise output; Gamma preset; Contrast enhancer; Black level booster; Various progressive settings; Dynamic lamp iris; Transient improvement
Overview
Sanyo’s PLV-Z5 does the LCD projector series proud once more. The improved features and easy-to-use menu design, as well as the excellent colour saturations and lack of video noise are definitely something special. The double iris feature also did a good job of tackling the contrast issues normally associated with auto-iris systems. However, we would still recommend this projector for use only in very well darkend viewing condition nonetheless.
Although the sub £1,500 price tag is pretty good anyway (you can actually pick one up for less than a grand now), if compared directly to something like the InFocus IN76, its rival just had the edge in terms of picture quality. This unfortunately just prevented the Z5 from getting a five star rating.
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Related sites: Sanyo
