PT-AX200U Calibration and Benchmark Tests

Like the PT-AX100U, the PT-AX200U handles reds and blues to the maximum limits of NTSC color. Greens tend to be a bit desaturated – though towards blue rather than yellow. Here are the Contrast Ratios I measured in the various Picture modes:

• Game (default) – 1623:1
• Cinema1 – 661:1
• Normal – 1746:1
• Dynamic – 2074:1

I also took a brief survey of the various color temperatures and confirmed that with a simple setting you could get very good ISF-type levels from this projector out of the box without too much hassle:

• Cinema1 – 7000K
• Normal – 8800K
• Game – 9000K
• Natural – 7700K
• Cinema2 – 7600K
• Dynamic – 7900K
• Vivid Cinema – 6550K

The first thing I did upon seeing the slightly increased temperature for the default Cinema1 mode, is attempt to bump down the Color Temp slider by -1 to see what would happen. The result was almost exactly 6500K. Now, be advised, some people just don't like 6500K whites. You may prefer a slightly less red white level at the default 7000K and who am I to argue with the settings put in place by Hollywood colorists? In any case, realize that bumping this setting is what yielded the results below.

Measurements

We utilized datacolor’s ColorFacts Professional 6.0 software to calibrate and measure the grayscale response of the PT-AX200U. Panasonic is again making sure that users have some very helpful default settings “out of the box”. We measured the Cinema1 mode and received the following excellent results:

These are very close to exactly what I expect to see “pre-calibration”. Often I find that the variance in color response is much more erratic and rarely do we find projectors at this price which don't really demand calibration to deliver a great picture.

Audioholics/HQV Bench Testing Summary of Test Results

Perfect Score is 130
Panasonic PT-AX200U Benchmark Score: 90 (identical to the PT-AX100U as expected)

Comments on Benchtesting

There were no surprises here. We ran the HQV suite of tests and found identical results to the PT-AX100U. A score of 90 shows that the Panasonic has an adequate video processor for the most important processing duties. The fact that it marginally passed the flag test, however, shows that it may be a tad favorable towards the tests and not tweaked as well for real-world content.

When running the Moving Zone Plate tests, 2/3 passed while 2/2 and the Default failed. There was plenty of flickering at higher speeds, but I detected no breakup of the image in any direction.