Panasonic PT-AX200

By Jamie Gemming

February 2008

Panasonic PT-AX200 projector. $2999.

Rear panel of the AX20. Click for largr image.

Just like a good novel I usually try and keep the outcome of my review a surprise till near the end but with this projector I know I’ll be screaming “bloody marvellous” every paragraph so I’ll just say it now - this projector is great.

Foundations

About three and half years ago when we were building our house the better half let me build a theatre room and buy a projector. After an indepth search I choose Panasonic’s PT-AE500 as I thought it was easily the best projector under 10 large. The AX200 is four evolutions on from the AE500 and is a vast improvement in all areas. The previous incarnation was the AX100 and it is very similar to the AX200. They both feature 2000 lumens, the same big white body, 1280x720 pixel count and can accept a 1080p/24 signal. Externally, the big difference is the addition of a second HDMI port, which is a very, very useful feature. Soon Sky high-def will be upon us and this will require a HDMI port, both the top XBox and PS3 require one as do all new DVD players. So unless you have a HDMI switching receiver the more ports you have the less plugging and unplugging of devices you will have to do.

The bulb in my AE500 in well past the 4000 hour mark and I’m already working on the plan to try and convince the wahine that replacing the projector is a better option than replacing the bulb. One of my big selling points is the noise of the new machine.

I’ve had the AX200 resting on a table, less than two feet from where I sit and in low lamp mode it is undetectable. If I mute the sound in the cricket I can only just hear the fan. So imagine if it was roof mounted, two metres away. Absolute silence!

Bad before the good, subtitles and words scrolling across the screen in advertisements were the only thing that was displayed in anything other than perfect quality. Everything else was perfect.

Not my first choice

Sometime around Christmas Pride and Prejudice was on the telly– it is one of my woman’s favourites so I had to watch it. But as we have it on DVD there was absolutely no way I was going to watch in crappy TV quality and with ads. The main thing I noticed was the stunning vistas of rural England and wonderfully natural looking skin tones of Keira Knightley, who somehow to my mind, looks a little out of place not dressed in a corset and surrounded by pirates.

One of the biggest issues with most projectors is lack of detail within the darker colours but this is not an area of concern with the AX200. The setting for the movie Children of Men is a very ugly, dark and polluted England in the year 2027. During the daytime scenes I can’t remember seeing the sun at all, as the whole movie is set in dark overcast conditions or at night. Where I am normally happy my own projector, the AX200 added almost an embarrassing amount of extra detail. Shading and texture suddenly is apparent in Clive Owen’s trench coat and unseen detail in the drab grey buildings of the detention centre is perceptible due to excellent contrast from the AX200.

Its true!

The dynamic iris is a complicated little device where a couple of small metal flaps are feathered in and out of the beam of light on a frame by frame basis. The light harmoniser that was introduced on the AX100 has been tweaked. There is a little sensor atop the projector which reads the ambient light in the room and accordingly adjusts the lamp power, iris and sharpness as well the brightness, contrast and gamma as per the previous model. I always thought things like the “light harmoniser” and “dynamic iris” were just fancy pants marketing terms until I went to a product launch that Panasonic put on the other day where they had a projector in pieces and the actual devices explained.

Playing Around

I’m already over my word limit and I haven’t explained some great features such as: how it throws a 100 inch picture from virtually no distance, zero screen door issues, a perfect backlit remote, a simple to use menu offering the ability to tweak all aspects of its performance and a manual horizontal and vertical lens shift.

Because of publishing deadlines I actually had the projector from early December. I’ve been lucky enough to play with lots of cool home theatre products in 2007, but this easily my favourite product of the year.

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