Sony VPL-VW665ES 4K Projector: Picture Quality 2

On our grayscale converted Hunger Games night, and also the Bond night train image found on the previous page show, this Sony VPL-VW665ES projector does an excellent job of revealing the darkest shadow detail.  On those images, the shrubs and woods behind the tracks on the right and center right, show about as much as any projector.  It should be noted, that per Mike, the default brightness setting is dead on, neither crushing shadow detail, nor unnecessarily raising the brightness of black.

In the photo player on this page, you are looking at a very dark scene from The Hunger Games.  Naturally, as with the Bond train scene, it is intentionally, and dramatically overexposed, to raise up the dark shadow detail so that it can easily be seen.

Look to the large dark area near the bottom just left of center as one area where very near black detail can be spotted on the best projectors.  Because we’ve only been using The Hunger Games in the past year, we don’t have as that many projectors where we took this photo, for comparison.

Bottom line on revealing the darkest shadow details (with values near 0 on a 0-255 range, is that the VPL-VW665ES projector does a first class job. Nothing out there should be dramatically better and, of course this is 4K, the best black level projectors are still merely 1080p!  Below, a few more images good for observing dark shadow detail (and black levels):

With excellent dark shadow detail handling, plus the really good black level performance, dark scenes pop.  That’s not to say that they are the best.  You’ll likely get more pop out of the top of the line JVC 1080p projectors, but let’s not quibble.  I’d rather watch a very dark scene like either of the two being discussed, on the Sony in true 4K (when available) than on that JVC, doing pixel shifting 1080p.  The slight, but real JVC advantage on the darkest of scenes will be more than offset by the “beauty” of real sharpness on true 4K content on a 4K projector – whether viewing bright, medium or dark scenes.

Overall, the VW665ES may not have the best combination of blacks and dark shadow detail, but it’s right up there and competitive.  Of course if you want true 4K and even blacker blacks, there is the more expensive Sony VW1100ES, and the new flagship (shipping Q1 ’16) Sony’s VPL-VW5000ES, at almost 3X the price!