Panasonic PT-AE900U projector Review
A bit like the aristocracy, Panasonic have had a hold on the market for a long time. Even during the old days when the only projectors you got were the DLP projectors targeted at the business world, Panasonic had the last say. Now they’re holding strong in the consumer market too with the AE900. It’s not the most attractive of designs but in terms of functionality Panasonic won’t let you down. They’ve had the foresight to make sure it’s HD ready which seems to be something others have missed out on and comes with plenty of connectivity as well as good quality image. Design |
| Remember Plain Jane in Neighbours? The one who deep down was attractive but on the surface wasn’t. This is the plain Jane of the projector world – deep down it’s full of goodies but to look at it, it’s rather dull. The bland silver exterior in a square box doesn’t have any imagination behind it. It might as well be a shoe box with a lens attached to it, it’s that unappealing. But while the glamour brush hasn’t touched it, the connector fairy has and it’s got lots of fabulous connections at the back including a Scart socket. And there’s a funky joystick at the front which we’ll talk about more below. |
| Features |
| You want your machine to provide a decent image and the Panasonic does that with its 1280 x 720 native resolution. It’s supposed to have a contrast and brightness of 5500:1 which is incredible if true and also 1100 ANSI lumens which all adds to a fantastic image. The AE900 also has a dynamic iris which works like the eye assessing everything and deciding whether to let in more or less light. It works intelligently and decides how much light it’s going to let in. And finally the Smooth Screen technology has been added – like a powerful iron it gets rid of all those nasty grids that you get on the wall and brings a smoothness to the pixels. And then there’s the cinema management system which looks at billions of colour combinations and picks out the one that’s best for you, giving you fantastic colours even when you’re not plugged into an HD device. Talking of HD there’s a plethora of outputs including a HDMI/DVI, S-video, component video and Scart socket. Now we’ve left the best till last. We mentioned in the design section about the joystick. Well Panasonic have added a joystick at the front that allows you to move the image around. No longer do you have to shift the coffee table your machine is sitting on. With the joystick you can shift it up, down, left or right at the touch of a stick. |
| Performance |
| This product will make you a happy bunny because it does what it says on the tin – it delivers a really good image. The iris lens gives an accurate picture with good lighting. The product gives you great brightness and richness in colour and what’s really good is the darker scenes which seem to show up really dark. Blacks are always important and the black level on this is rather good, and seems to be better than other models on the market at present. The strongest point about this model will have to be the colour. The colour response is fantastic thanks to Cinema Colour Management system and what it does is provide colours that are natural. The only thing that doesn’t get a top rating is the sharpness – while good there are others on the market like the Infocus and Hitachi projectors that are a bit shaper. Finally the performance of the joystick is great. It makes life so much easier being able to move the picture around with a small stick rather than having to rearrange furniture. And finally the remote control, a small factor but it comes with a backlit so it’s easy to operate even when the lights are out and is also intelligent enough to be able to operate other devices too. |
| What's In The Box? |
| Projector, remote control, power cable, instruction manual |
| Overall Opinion |
| On the whole the Panasonic PT-AE900U seems to be a great little machine. Not the prettiest on the market but it works well and will serve you well, whether it’s for watching movies or playing games. And the fact it comes with an HDMI port makes it perfect for future appliances. |
By Babita Wakelin
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Pros + Great colours. Good image. Lots of connections. HDMI ready. Joystick for moving image around. |
Cons - Blacks are good but not as good as some on the market. Other models have slightly sharper image. |
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Overall Rating 
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By Babita Wakelin
13/7/2006 at 2:30:59pm
13/7/2006 at 2:30:59pm
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