Panasonic PT-AT6000E review

Picture quality, especially when watching high-definition video, was excellent. It was virtually impossible to spot the pixel structure of the image, even when right next to the projection. Panasonic’s Detail Clarity image sharpening feature did a fantastic job at bringing out the detail of our test clips, with uniform sharpness across the image. In a dark room, the new lamp really proves itself, producing bright and colourful images with plenty of contrast. Black levels, typically a sticking point for many projectors, were impressive but not perfect. Even so, they’re up there with some of the best projectors we’ve seen.

Of the multiple picture modes, the REC709 preset is undeniably the best; the dynamic and high-brightness modes emit as much light as possible but sacrifice picture quality in the process, and colours appeared slightly muted in all of the Cinema modes. Panasonic’s menu system is fairly plain, but it’s easy to navigate and makes it easy to tweak picture settings. Each toggle, slider and option minimises the interface to help you better judge whether your adjustments are improving the picture or making it worse. There’s plenty to adjust too, such as brightness, colour, contrast and sharpness.

The PT-AT6000E also has a lot more advanced features, including dynamic iris, intelligent frame creation, a rather complex colour management system, noise reduction, greyscale and gamma control, including luminance and even a waveform viewer. We disabled the dynamic iris for the majority of our testing in order to get uniform results, and after calibration found no reason to enable it again. We had to judge Frame Creation a little more subjectively. With the option disabled, it was easy to spot 24p Blu-ray footage; some of us think this gives the impression of being in the cinema, but others hate it. Switched to its lowest setting, the same footage appears much smoother but doesn’t introduce motion artefacts.

3D image quality was equally impressive, although not quite up to the same lofty standards as 2D video. There’s a small amount of additional judder when watching 24p Blu-rays and we also spotted a tiny amount of crosstalk, which didn’t disappear when we changed the brightness of the glasses. Panasonic bundles two sets of 3D glasses with the PT-AT6000; they’re much lighter than designs from previous years and recharge using a Micro USB port. If more than two people want to watch 3D video, you’ll have to pay around £80 for each additional set.

The PT-AT6000 competes well with other high-end projectors, such as the Sony VPL-HW50ES and the Epson EH-TW9100, and in many respects it outperforms, with excellent connectivity and extensive calibration settings. There are a few small inconsistencies with 3D playback and black levels, but with some tweaking you can produce a fantastic picture. We think that the pin-sharp images and incredibly accurate colours give Panasonic PT-AT6000E the edge, making it the projector to buy.