Company & Product Overview

Sony has been an Audio Advice favorite for several decades and they have consistently made great video products. One reason for this is their involvement in filmmaking — from capturing great footage with their cameras to post-production gear that processes the images, and then displaying it on one of their commercial projectors — they touch every part of the movie-making process. There is no other company we know of that touches every phase of content like Sony.

We always look forward to improvements in the new models and we were super excited when we heard about 3 new projectors for 2022. When we found out Sony was going to bring them to us to check out weeks before they were announced, we were just thrilled. We all did have to sign NDA’s and be sworn to secrecy, but it was super cool to see these new models before anyone else! They were even nice enough to leave them with us for a few days to check out each one. As you can imagine, we had several eager video enthusiasts who were willing to check them out in their theaters.

Design & Build Quality

This overview is on the middle model, the VPL-XW6000, which we think will probably be the best-selling unit in the new series.

For those looking to get their first front projector or considering Sony for the first time, we’d like to share a little insight into why we love their projectors. When you touch every part of the content chain, your engineers learn how to deliver the best possible picture. Sony also has the benefit of making professional camera lenses for both video and still-capture images. They have a world of knowledge about the importance of the role the lens plays in image quality.

There are three components that stand out for us and set them apart. Those are — the lens, the video processor, and their SXRD panel. Interestingly, those three aspects are all substantially improved in the XW6000 over last year's model.

We should also mention when you purchase your Sony projector from Audio Advice, we are here for you with the best tech support in the industry. We can help you get things set up with video chat calls and supply you with the best settings for your projector to help dial it in. Plus, if you live within range of our stores, we have full installation support as well.

Now, let’s dive in and look at the amazing VPL-XW6000!

Features & Technology

If you have followed us, you know we love laser light engines in front projectors. They give us far more light output for those big immersive screens and have a much longer life span. Plus, the colors just seem to really pop with a well-done laser projector. For 2022, Sony updates its lamp-based projector in this price range with a laser light engine. The XW6000 gives us 2500 lumens, which means you can do much larger screens in this price range than last year. A bonus with laser is its 20,000-hour life span. That translates into 2 movies every single day for almost 14 years!

The Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD) panels used in the XW6000 are all-new in 2022. Sony is using 3 0.61” native 4K panels The 4K SXRD panels Sony had been using were engineered when 4K first hit the market a few years ago. Sony re-did the panels when they came out with their top-of-the-line GTZ-380, and this new line of projectors benefits from their learnings. With this brand new panel, they took that tech and went even further. They gave the new panel a flatter reflective surface and added 10% more light reflectance than before. Also, light resistance was improved by 50%. Both of these contribute to even better contrast and brightness, which is a critical part in producing a great HDR image.

We have always thought Sony’s panels gave us great colors, but more importantly, a very smooth image with depth that makes you feel like you are looking out of a window.

Sony also improved the way the panels interact with the laser light engine. There is a new optic design called Wide-Dynamic Range Optics. The three panels are positioned in the optical block in a way to have better light control and maximize the laser light engine. The layout of the laser diodes was changed to a denser arrangement and a new cooling system was added. This gives you higher brightness and contrast improvements, which are even more important with HDR.

We have always felt Sony video processors are a huge key to their great picture. They have a vast library of images from their involvement in the film industry. These become part of the processor's reference as it makes millions of adjustments to the image to achieve the perfect picture. When Sony released their almost $100,000 top-of-the-line front projector in 2021, it had a brand new processing chip called the “X1 Ultimate” that could work even faster and with better algorithms than ever before.

The” X1 Ultimate for Projector” processor provides improved clarity, expanded dynamic range, and an even larger volume of colors. How they do this is pretty cool as it comes from all of their experience in the film industry.

Sony has two databases of reference images built into the processor chip it looks at for noise reduction and upscaling. The X1 Ultimate for Projector is comparing each frame to these to improve the clarity of the picture.

All while this is happening, the processor is finding dark parts of the image and determining the best way to enhance them with their Digital Contrast Optimizer tech to give us deeper and richer blacks.

You’ve likely read about HDR, which stands “for high dynamic range.” This came out a few years ago, and it initially did not work that well with projectors since it required much more light output than any projector could produce. But, the projector manufacturers quickly introduced new software that analyzes the HDR signal to work well with projectors.

Sony has developed some great technology for handling HDR and it runs even better on the newest processor. Their Dynamic HDR Enhancer looks at every single frame to provide the best contrast to make the dark scenes darker while maintaining great clarity and detail, so you can see fine details in the black areas. It even controls the output power of the laser to provide the best contrast. You can adjust the level this enhancer works at as you will want it more engaged the larger your screen size is.

Then Sony uses their Object-based HDR Remaster process to analyze individual objects in a scene. This system adjusts contrast on an even finer level to give the images more depth and texture. In testing this we first noticed some video noise using the default settings. Once we adjusted these, we were very impressed. We perform these adjustments for our local installation customers, and if you buy from Audio Advice online, we will provide you with a tips and tricks guide that goes over how to get things perfect. If you get these settings right, these two processes produce an HDR picture that is just stunning!

For 2022, Sony is updating all of their projectors to Triluminos Pro. This first came out in the GTZ380 and gives the system a billion possible colors. With this wider range, you can see finer shades of colors which add more realism to the picture.

The final big update for 2022 on the XW6000 and XW7000 is an entirely new lens system Sony calls the ACF Lens, which means Advanced Crisp Focus. They use a 70mm aspherical lens with 13 glass elements behind the primary lens. Compared to the spherical lens you find on most projectors, their lens has very little distortion at the edge, which means even the part of the image on the edge of your screen will be very sharp and focused.

All projector lenses have multiple internal lenses. Most companies just move one of these groups when you zoom the lens out for different throw distances. This can cause some image distortion. Sony designed a new system, which again, filtered down from the GTZ380 that has a floating and fixed lens group. These move now as you change the zoom to keep the image totally distortion-free. There can also be some color deviation between red, green, and blue when you change the zoom on any projection lens. Sony uses extra-low dispersion glass to prevent this from happening.

This new lens system along with higher light output are a couple of things that separate the new XW5000 from the XW6000, but the big one is the ability to go full widescreen. The XW6000 has motorized lens zoom with memory presets. This means you can have individual settings for different aspect ratios allowing you to get into the wonderful world of immersive widescreen. If you do not like seeing those black bars on the top and bottom when you watch a movie and want to feel more like you are in a commercial cinema, widescreen is exactly what you need.

When you see an image this good on a screen that fills the width of your room, your face will have a grin from ear to ear! We have a great article that explains all about widescreen, if you want to learn more about how it works.

For those of you into gaming, the gaming mode for these new projectors brings input lag down to about as low as we have seen on a projector. For 4K60P it is 21 milliseconds and for HD120P a remarkable 13 milliseconds.

Performance

So, let's count them up. A new laser light engine with 2500 lumens, a new SXRD panel system for better contrast, the same incredible video processor you get in the top of the line projector, an improved optical system, Sony’s great HDR processing, a very high tech lens system, and finally the ability to do widescreen! These make the XW6000 just an amazing projector, which is why we feel it will be the best selling one in the new group.

With such a powerful light engine we wondered if the projector would be noisy, so we decided to take some measurements. We placed the microphone at the fan’s output and measured just 53 dB, at 3 ft away it dropped to 34 dB, and at 6’ away, it was only 31 dB. Sony has done a great job of cooling the laser engine while keeping the noise down as those lower numbers are below the noise floor in some rooms.

We wanted to find out if the new ACF lens would make these Sony models even better when we measure the difference in light output between the longest and shortest throw range. If you have never installed a front projector, you’ll soon find you will have a range you can position it in. To get this range you multiply the width of your screen by two ratios to get the long and short points. This gets a little trickier for widescreen and lens memory, but we help you with that when you purchase your projector from Audio Advice.

In any case, most projectors we have measured have a change in light output from the shortest point to the longest point on the same size screen of 40-50%. This means if you install it towards the longest range, your picture is not nearly as bright as it would be if installed closer. Sony projectors have always been in the 20-30% change range when we have tested them. So we took some lux measurements and found the XW6000 only drops 22% from short to long. This means if you need to put it further back in your room for aesthetic reasons, you could without much change.

This brings up a key point. When evaluating projectors you cannot just look at the stated lumens and have a true comparison. The lumen spec is usually the theoretical maximum of that projector, but once you set the colors correctly and adjust the zoom for your throw distance, the numbers can change quite a bit. In the case of Sony, their stated numbers are way more representative of what you should expect in the field compared to cheaper projectors, and this is certainly the case for the XX6000.

We gave the XW6000 to one of our team members who had last year's model VPL-VW715 in his theater and got a really good comparison between the two.

The new processor does a far better job of improving streaming content on the new projector. A 4K Apple TV was used and on Netflix and HBO Max a huge and easily noticeable difference was noticed there. Noisy YouTube videos benefited even more. This truly is a big step up in the video processor with the new X1 Ultimate for Projector.

Motion also seemed to be handled better. Several fast-moving Marvel scenes were much smoother and even rolling credits looked clearer on the XW6000.

Watching sports felt more like seeing the image on a great flat-panel TV with incredible brightness and the lights could even be left up with little washout.

Fan noise was also better and should be in most applications. Even though they measure about the same, the vents in the XW6000 point to the rear as opposed to the 715 which points to the front. This made it seem much quieter in the space it was tested in.

Overall Recommendation

While the VPL-XW6000 is certainly not inexpensive, it offers up the most technology we have ever seen from Sony in this price range. We are 100% sure the XW6000 will be at the top of anyone's list who wants a big, bright widescreen image.