Viewsonic Pro9000 review

The projector itself is surprisingly small for a Full HD unit. We’ve seen 720p models that are bigger than this. The moulded black plastic finish looks reasonably attractive, particularly around the off-centre lens, with all the inputs located on the back and controls on the top. It’s height adjustable thanks to four screw-in feet and the lens has +/- 15 degrees of vertical adjustment, but there’s no horizontal shift mode, so you’ll have to rely on digital keystone if there’s no way to position it parallel to your screen.

Around the back there are two HDMI ports, one composite and one S-Video input, as well as an RGB port that can accept composite inputs through the bundled adaptor. As the HDMI ports are both version 1.3-compatible, you won’t be able to watch 3D content on the Pro9000. This may not be a major problem if your other A/V equipment isn’t 3D-ready, but there are many similarly priced projectors from other manufacturers that do support 3D, so it’s a shame it isn’t supported here. There’s also a 3.5mm audio output, which you’ll probably want to use if you aren’t already using an A/V amplifier. The weedy 2W stereo speakers are understandably poor.

As Viewsonic’s first hybrid projector designed for home cinema, the Pro9000 coped very well in many of our tests. It was easily bright enough for the average home setup, with vibrant colours and sharp images. The lack of 3D support is disappointing, although not a deal breaker, and both colour accuracy and black levels could have been better out of the box, but we were still impressed overall.

Our only concern is the price. At £1,599, it’s almost £400 more expensive than the wireless HDMI-equipped Epson EH-TW6000 projector, and nearly £600 more than the HDMI-less TW5900. You could argue that over the lifetime of the projector you’ll save that money on replacement lamps, but with 4K just over the horizon we think the Epson would be a better bet.