Panasonic PT-AX100E review

If you want to enjoy HP footage to its fullest potential, you need a giant screen.

The best way to do this is with a home cinema projector, such as Panasonic's PT-AX100E. It arrived too late to be reviewed for our projector group test (Labs, Shopper May 2007), which is a shame, as it would have given the home cinema Best Buy winner, Hitachi's Illumina PJ-TX300, some serious competition.

Like the PJ-TX300, the PT-AX100E is a 3-LCD model with a 1,280x720 native resolution and a 16:9 native aspect ratio. Its dynamic iris helps to give more contrast than a traditional LCD system. This works by letting less light through in dark scenes to increase the number of dark shades, and letting more light through in light scenes to increase the number of light shades. Despite the fact that the PT-AX100E has a lower 6,000:1 contrast ratio than the PJ-TX300's 10,000:1, we couldn't tell the difference between the two.

We were impressed with the PT-AX100E's 2,000 ANSI lumens, which make it considerably brighter than any other home cinema model we've seen. The PJ-TX300 manages only 1,200 ANSI lumens. This means the PT-AX100E will produce a visible display in much lighter rooms than other home cinema projectors can manage.

The PT-AX100E will fit into rooms of any size. It can display an image size range of 49in at 1.2m up to a massive 200in at 12.4m, although you'd need a big room to do this. The PT-AX100E doesn't have to face the display area directly, as its lens can be physically adjusted up to 25 per cent horizontally and 63 per cent vertically using the lens-shift wheels.

There's a VGA connector for connecting a PC, and using it produced an excellent image. However, if your PC has a DVI connector, we'd recommend buying a DVI-to-HDMI cable for the best possible image quality. There are component, composite and S-video connectors for any other home-entertainment equipment you might have.

We can't fault the image quality produced by the PT-AX100E. Although it is a home cinema model, it sailed through all our display tests without any problems at all. It performed well when showing HD video clips, picking out sharp detail in even the darkest areas. It was equally impressive when displaying interlaced material.

Panasonic's PT-AX100E is easily the equal of Hitachi's PJ-TX300 in terms of image quality, but it costs £150 more. This may be worth paying, however, if you will take advantage of the 2,000 ANSI lumens brightness and use it in lighter rooms.