Meet the New Boss

VPL-VW885ES, a 4K LCOS projector with a laser light engine

- Kris Deering

THREE YEARS AGO, Sony introduced the VPL-VW885ES, a 4K LCOS projector with a laser light engine. I found the 885ES to be capable of throwing high-quality images when I reviewed it, but in the end wasn’t fully enamored with the new projector. Basically, I felt it had obvious shortcomings that were hard to ignore at the premium $25,000 price. And while the company issued a firmware update in 2019 that directly addressed some points I had complained about in my review, the 885ES is now being replaced with the VPL-VW915ES, a model that builds on the successful aspects of the previous design while coming in at a lower $20,000 price point.

SAME LOOK, NEW THRILLS

It didn’t take very long to figure out that the 915ES is nearly identical in every way to the 885ES from a hardware perspective. The new projector’s chassis, dual blue laser light engine, native 4K SXRD panels, remote control, and onscreen menus are essentially identical to that previous model. At first, I had trouble trying to figure out exactly what was different. During a talk with a Sony rep, I learned that the main difference from the 885ES is an update to the projector’s X1 video chip. The 915ES features a revised version called X1 for Projectors that provides a higher level of processing granularity—something I’ll touch on later in this review.