Panasonic AE900U

The Short Form

$1,800 ($3,200 list) / 13.3 x 4.1 x 10.6 IN / 8 LBS / panasonic.com / 888-843-9788

Plus

•Deep blacks •Highly adjustable

Minus

•Dimmer image •Some softness

Key Features

•1,280 x 720-pixel LCD Projector •Inputs 1 HDMI; 2 component-video; 1 S-video, 1 composite-video; 1 RGB/VGA; 1 RS-232C control •PRICE $1,800 ($3,200 List) Full Lab Results

Panasonic's PT-AE900U is a silver box with pedestrian styling compared to most projectors in the roundup. But its long zoom and versatile lens shift, employed by moving a unique and surprisingly fine joystick control, made up for that, allowing the most flexible installation of any projector I reviewed.

CONTRAST The LCD-driven Panasonic AE900U wasn't quite as bright as most of the DLPs I looked at, but, like the other LCD from Hitachi, it had no trouble delivering nice deep blacks, again in part because of a mechanical iris control. The letterbox bars above and below the image looked inky even next to the black felt border around my screen, and the shadows behind Lincoln and Jordan as they slept in the abandoned building looked convincingly dark. Thanks to the Panasonic AE900U's highly adjustable gamma control, I was able to get great detail in shadows without negatively affecting overall contrast - for example, in the texture of a building's stone facade.

COLOR Before calibration, the Panasonic AE900U's grayscale was the most-accurate of the group, and afterward it was bested by only the Samsung and the InFocus. Grays and white looked neutral throughout The Island, and colors, such as Jordan's skin tone as she leaned over to whisper to Lincoln, had a natural, saturated look. Greens were again the exception. During the elevator ride, the quick glimpse of the island - lush and green - looked ever slightly too yellow. As with the Hitachi, I did see less uniform white fields than with the DLPs. In one early example, during the onscreen credit for Scarlett Johansson, the white sky becomes noticeably darker toward the left side of the screen.

DETAIL The Panasonic AE-900U resolved every line of a 720p test pattern, but the HD image looked slightly soft in some scenes, especially those with onscreen text. This wasn't as detectable as on the Mitsubishi or the Sharp, however, and I probably would've missed it had I not seen some of the more detailed models, like the Optoma, side by side.