Sony VPL-VW300ES review

At £5,850, the VPL-VW300ES is Sony’s cheapest SXRD-based 4K projector yet. That might seem hard to believe when the price is still eye-wateringly expensive, but when you consider Sony’s next model up, the VPL-VW500ES, costs almost double that, the VW300ES is certainly a far more tempting prospect for anyone after a 4,096×2,160 home cinema experience.

The projector itself is huge, measuring 495x195x463mm and weighing a hefty 14kg, so you’ll need a fair amount of room if you’re installing it on a shelf. As such, this projector is probably best suited to mounting on your ceiling, particularly since the menu buttons, video inputs and power supply are all located around the sides of the projector and in some cases underneath the outer plastic lip of the chassis.

The VW300ES has just two HDMI 2.0 inputs for connecting external devices, but as only the second input is HDCP 2.2 compatible you’ll have to use it for any HDCP-protected 4K content. Still, this means it should be relatively future proof for 4K streaming services and 4K Blu-ray when they eventually arrive. There’s also a USB port for firmware updates and a Fast Ethernet port for connecting the projector to your home network. All other ports are for home automation, including two minijack triggers, an RS-232C remote, and an IR input to extend the range of the remote.

Fussy port locations aside, the VW300ES is very easy to set up, as the +85 /-80% vertical and +/-31% horizontal lens shift, 2.06x zoom and lens focus are all controlled via the remote rather than on the projector itself. It can project a screen ranging from 60in to a massive 300in, so you could have films projecting across an entire wall if you have the space.

The main problem, however, is finding 4K content. For example, 4K Netflix and Amazon Instant Video are both currently confined to compatible 4K Smart TVs and while Sony has been a big supporter of 4K content, its FMP-X10 4K media player is currently only available in the US for a staggering $699. Although Sony says the VW300ES is compatible with its range of ‘Mastered in 4K’ Blu-rays, these are still only 1,080p movies which have been optimised for 4K upscaling, rather than true 4K films.

With 4K Blu-rays and native 4K Blu-ray players still a full year away as well (if not longer depending on when the Blu-Ray Disc Association get round to finalising the standard), the only 4K content you’re likely to be watching on the VW300ES in the foreseeable future is either still photos or 4K video footage you’ve shot yourself on a smartphone or video camera.

For this you’ll need a PC or laptop with an HDMI output, but bear in mind that only those that support the HDMI 2.0 standard can output 4K video at 60fps. At the moment, it’s more likely your computer will have an HDMI 1.4 output, which can only manage a maximum frame rate of 24fps at 4K. This isn’t really up to the task of showing 60fps or 30fps footage smoothly and it limits the amount of content you can comfortably enjoy on the VW300ES even further. We tried running both 60fps and 30fps 4K clips from a laptop, but all of them were very jerky and juddery, so we’d recommend shooting in 24fps if possible.

Of course, anyone after a 4K projector today is clearly buying it as a long-term investment rather than something to enjoy in here and now, but when so much about 4K is still up in the air, it still leaves the VW300ES feeling like a very expensive bit of future-proofing. Let’s not forget that you’ll also want to buy an AV receiver with HDCP 2.2-compatible HDMI 2.0 ports when the time comes, but at time of writing the only one that fulfils these requirements is the £450 Onkyo TX-NR636.

However, we certainly can’t complain about the VW300ES’s picture quality, as the 60fps 4K nature footage provided by Sony for our testing looked absolutely stunning, showing just what the projector will be capable of when 4K finally gets off the ground.

Admittedly, the VW300ES’s 1,500 lumen lamp struggled to show areas of fine shadow detail with the lights on, but colours truly come alive in the dark. We didn’t have to shroud our room in complete darkness either, as we could still see a huge level of detail with a bit of ambient light present.

Picture quality was outstanding from the outset, and we felt little need to tamper with the projector’s various menu settings. There are several different picture modes to choose from, including two Cinema modes, Reference, TV, Photo, Game, Bright Cinema, Bright TV and User, but all of them are fully customisable. Cinema 1 produced the most pleasing picture, so we used it for the majority of our testing.

There are basic contrast, brightness, colour, hue, sharpness and colour temperature settings, as well as gamma, colour correction and colour space options in the Expert Settings menu. The Dynamic contrast and cinema scope options that were present in the VW500ES are missing here, but we didn’t mourn their loss.

Sony’s 4K Reality Creation engine is also onboard for upscaling Full HD content to 4K. Blu-ray discs showed clear sharpening and highlighting of smaller background details and facial features when paused, particularly around eyes and hairlines, but the effect grew less obvious the further back we sat from the projection screen. We struggled to notice it once films were in motion. That said, general upscaling was still incredibly impressive, as the midnight forests of Pandora looked stunningly sharp and clear in Avatar even without Reality Creation turned on.

Sony’s MotionFlow feature, which adds extra frames into films to help make them appear smoother, was more pronounced. The Smooth High and Smooth Low settings were a little too pronounced for our liking, but Combination and True Cinema looked much more natural.

Naturally, the VW300ES is 3D-ready as well. It sadly doesn’t include any active shutter glasses in the box, but according to Sony it’s compatible with all active shutter glasses brands so you don’t necessarily have to get Sony’s own TDG-BT500A glasses to add an extra dimension to your viewing experience.

We saw no signs of crosstalk or flicker throughout our testing, and while glasses cause an inevitable darkening of the screen, we were pleased to see two presets for boosting 3D brightness. You can also adjust the 3D depth, although we found the default setting to be perfectly comfortable. All of the 2D picture modes are available in 3D too, giving you plenty of options to help tweak the picture.

The Sony VPL-VW300ES is a fantastic 4K projector, which we’re sure will fit the bill for anyone looking to kit out their home cinema setup with the latest tech and has the cash to do it. However, because 4K content is still a rather nebulous concept outside of 4K Smart TVs, we don’t feel we can give it a full recommendation just yet – especially when you can get a perfectly capable Full HD projector such as the Sony VPL-HW40ES for under £2,000 and get full use out of it right now. We have no qualms about the quality of the VPL-VW300ES; we just wish there was something to watch on it.