Panasonic PT-AX200U / PT-AX200E 3LCD Gamer’s Projector Review

The Panasonic PT-AX200U (Americas) / PT-AX200E (Europe and Asia) is a native 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) high definition digital home theatre projector with an impressive 2,000 ANSI lumen brightness. Panasonic’s marketing of the PT-AX200U has an emphasis on it’s suitability as a gaming projector and 720p will handle the signal definition of most current games. Equally impressive is the 6000:1 contrast ratio.

Panasonic PT-AX200U

For the PT-AX200U, Panasonic have utilized 3LCD microdisplay technology which uses three LCD panels (one per primary color) to produce an image. 3LCD is marketed as having the following key advantages;

A brighter picture with a three continuous primary color light sources
More natural colors from video 12 bit processing
Greater resolution - high definition performance
No rainbow effect from fast moving action due to having 3 LCD panels rather than utilizing a spinning color wheel

The PT-AX200U is an update of the popular PT-AX100U with changes including;

Significantly faster response time – 60% increase
12-bit LCD drivers boosting the reproducible colors 64 times to 68.7 billion colors as compared to 1.1 billion from 10-bit drivers
Quadrupling gradation approximation to 4096 from previous 1024
New game mode
Saveable modes for different video sources (games)
Second HDMI port
Redesigned auto iris

Panasonic’s marketing emphasizes how their changes have benefited gamers and rightly so. Fast response times are essential for gaming. More colors means better video reproduction and more gradation capability means more detail in darker images (so common in games). Of course the high lumen capability means brighter on-screen images even in rooms with considerable ambient light.

Game Mode

The PT-AX200’s Game mode improves signal processing by up to 60% for a faster response time. For gamers this means a reduction in Game Lag. Gradation in saturated areas to show details that would have been lost in dark areas of an image.

Dynamic Iris

Panasonic have improved their dynamic iris technology to provide deeper blacks. Panasonic describe the system as working by analyzing histograms to determine the brightness level of each video image and adjusting the iris, lamp power and gamma curve.

Pure Color Filter

The included optical filter optimizes the light from the UHM projector lamp to improve the tri primary colors purity levels for the three LCD panels. The improved color purity increases the color gamut area for more life-like colors and produces blacker blacks closing the performance gap with plasma displays.

Smooth Screen Technology

LCD displays are suspect to the chicken wire effect ,generally at closer viewing distances, where individual pixels become visible with black lines between them. The PT-AX200 includes Panasonics new patented Smooth Screen technology to eliminate this effect. Panasonic use crystal double refraction to bridge the inter-pixel gaps. Smooth Screen removes an advantage DLP projection technology has had over LCD projection technology.

Intelligent Light Harmonizer

Measurement of the amount of light in a room by an in-built ambient light sensor is used by the PT-AX200 to optimize the picture quality for that lighting level. The Harmonizer 2 control circuit adjusts the gamma curve, iris setting, lamp power and picture sharpness.

Superior Installation Flexibility

Vertical and horizontal lens shift combined with 2X optical zoom give a lot of flexibility for setting up the projector in a room. It makes the projector more suitable for temporary set up situations.

The vertical and horizontal shift ranges are impressive at 63% of screen height and 25% of screen width respectively. Lens shift is quickly and easily adjusted using the joy stick (targeting gamers again) mounted on the front of the projector. The combination of large lens shift range and a generous 2x optical zoom provides the flexibility to position the projector either on a table at the front of the room or a shelf or ceiling at the back of the room.

Having 2000 lumen of brightness means you can still have a bright on-screen image with a fair amount of ambient light.

The projector also has vertical digital keystone correction of ±30 degrees. However, lens shift should be the preferred method of projected image adjustment as there is no possibility of introducing image artifacts as with digital keystone correction.