Sony announces Two new Laser Projectors - April 2022

The New XW series of projectors has been announced today by manufacturers Sony. The series includes two new projectors, the VPL-XW5000ES, and VPL-XW7000ES.

• Extreme clarity

• Expanded colour volume

• Worlds smallest Native 4k SXRD panel

• Better panel driving technology

• Wide dynamic range optics

• High levels of contrast and improved luminance

• Flagship X1 ultimate chip

• Floating focus system for improved contrast and definition

Let's look at the new features in a little more detail:

Sony says their focus on these projectors is extreme clarity, Expanded Dynamic Range, and Expanded Colour Volume. At the heart of the projectors is the Flagship X1 Ultimate chip, offering a high-performance picture processor. Producing highly acclaimed Bravia picture quality technology optimised for projector image. Sony states that this chip is 2.8x more powerful than previous models.

New Chasis Design

A new chassis design has also been introduced which looks to take the dimensions of the projectors down from their predecessors. The new XW5000es claims to be the most compact 4K Home cinema projector on the market. In terms of style, however, the new projectors retain the look and feel of previous models.

Object-Based Super Resolution

The goal of extreme clarity has seen various shifts in these models. Most notably, Sony claims the shift from frame-based analysis to object-based analysis. Object-based super-resolution detects individual objects in a picture and preserves detail. Dual database processing then cleans the picture reducing on-screen noise, upscaling the resolution, and improving clarity.

Dynamic HDR Enhancer

Dynamic HDR Enhancer delivers the best contrast by processing HDR content scene by scene. It enhances the contrast in combination with laser output control, making bright scenes brighter and dark scenes darker to deliver bright 4K HDR images. Dynamic HDR Enhancer optimizes high brightness and dark areas accordingly, providing optimal HDR images for each scene and reproducing the original PQ curve.

Wide Colour Gamut and High Brightness

The premium model XW7000es also features Trimulinos Pro with 95% DCI-P3 colour gamut, offering faithful colour tone. 

Our first thoughts on Sony's new Projectors

The XW7000es looks to be a good addition to this area of the market. At 3200 lumens it is much brighter than its predecessors the VPL-VW790 and 890. Its new ACF Lens looks promising but the proof will be once we can test this in real life. We are also pleased to see Sony reducing the chassis size on these new models. The only downside to this projector for the price point is that we would have expected a move to HDMI 2.1 to help future-proof.

With the XW5000es model, we are very pleased to see a reduction in size particularly in a native 4K model. This will make it much more appealing to people looking for a more compact projector for a regular living room. Our main disappointment with this model comes in the form of the manual lens. Not adding a powered lens to a home cinema projector seems rather outdated in our opinion and people looking to switch screen sizes/ratios, and especially multiple screen positions will need to look elsewhere. That said we feel Sony has priced this projector right and it will slot nicely into the market.

Be the first to get your hands on the new projectors

We have now added the projectors to our online store. Put your order in and as soon as we get stock of the first new projectors in July we will ship you one out.