PANASONIC PT-AE700 review

PANASONIC PT-AE700

RATING HHHHH

PRICE £1,149 inc VAT and delivery

SUPPLIER www.pixmania.co.uk

DETAILS www.panasonic.co.uk

LCD projectors started off as expensive business tools for giving long and dull presentations. As prices dropped, home users became interested and savvy manufacturers began to market their cheaper projectors as being useful for both office and home use. More recently we have seen the market divide, as the feature sets of office and home projectors diverged.

The PT-AE700 is meant for home use. This can be seen primarily in its native 16:9 widescreen ratio, which is ideal for watching DVD movies or digital TV broadcasts. Panasonic has included almost every connector imaginable, the most important being the component, SCART and HDMI connectors.

Component is the current input of choice for most DVD players capable of progressive scan. A SCART socket provides an RGB picture and great compatibility with Freeview or Sky set-top boxes as well as video-game consoles. HDMI is the flash new connector for the home cinema market. It replaces the Digital Video Interface (DVI) in the AV market; see our 'How it works' box opposite.

This projector lets you enjoy a wide range of media. We watched movies, played games and ran the Windows desktop through it. Each input provided excellent image clarity. Our greyscale test appeared smooth with little banding. It never quite achieved the deep black we would like, though this is not unusual on LCD projectors.

Build quality is fine, although it's bigger and looks more plastic than its predecessor, the AE500. However, its increased size means it has a better thermal and noise signature, making it one of the quietest projectors we've used. Bulb life is up to 4,000 hours in low lamp mode, though this requires a fully darkened room. Even in normal mode, it will struggle in anything more than subdued lighting. Still, this is a minor issue for a home cinema projector, especially one that's such good value.