Shift-Free 4K

Sony VPL-VW285ES LCOS Projector

- Thomas J. Norton

ULTRA HD WITH TRUE NATIVE 4K resolution on its imaging chips has been, so far, difficult to do at a cost most consumers can accept. New DLP-driven 4K projectors that utilize pixel-shifting, which delivers the full UHD pixel count in successive half-frames of diagonally shifted pixels, have recently come on the market at prices as low as $2,000. But native 4K projectors that can put all 8 million pixels in a UHD frame on the screen simultaneously have been pricey, with the cheapest to date coming in around $8,000.

At last September’s CEDIA Expo, however, Sony introduced three true-4K projectors including the VPL-VW885ES (laser-lit, and at $25,000, still astronomically priced), the VPL-VW385ES ($8,000), and the subject of our review, the VPL- VW285ES ($5,000). That last one is hardly a Black Friday special, but it’s definitely the most affordable true native-4K consumer projector to date. So what, exactly, did Sony sacrifice from its pricier models to drive down the cost? Let’s have a look.

Features

The VPL-VW285ES is a three-chip SXRD design. (SXRD is Sony’s version of LCOS, which stands for Liquid Crystal on Silicon.) As with all other Sony 4K models, its imaging chips have a resolution of 4096 x 2160, rather than the consumer UHD standard of 3840 x 2160.