ViewSonic Corporation is an American privately held multinational company with headquarters in Brea, California. Since 1987, the company has been successfully competing in the segment of monitors, displays, tablets, etc. Probably many are familiar with the colorful company logo with Lady Gouldian finch.
Projectors are one of its main areas of focus. Traditionally for industry leaders, ViewSonic annually expands its product range. In particular, the list of most popular new models includes (2022-2023):
– mid-focal ViewSonic X1/X2 1080p (discontinued);
– portable ViewSonic M10 1080p with laser light engine.
This year was no exception and the company introduced the LX700-4K laser projector. The company positions it as a compact Xbox gaming model with extremely low latency (input lag of jast 4.2ms for 1080p@240Hz). Like X1/X2 4K, it’s developed in collaboration with Microsoft and is full compatible with Xbox gaming consoles 2024, including Xbox Series X / Series S. In addition, Designed for Xbox certification means 1440p@60Hz/120Hz support, expanding the model’s capabilities from Xbox level to true competitive gaming with PlayStation, Nintendo, and PC.
Unlike the LED X2-4K with light output up to 2,150 ANSI lumens, the claimed brightness of laser phosphor light source in LX700 reaches 3,500 ANSI lumens. To be fair, testing shows only ~3,100 ANSI lumens with acceptable color accuracy. Of course, the brightness can be increased to max in Bright picture mode, but it displays the image with a very heavy green bias.
Additionally, the new model uses a 0.65-inch DMD DLP chip with 4-phase pixel shifting (Texas Instruments’ XPR technology). It supports 4K UHD resolution (3,840 x 2,160) with the 8.3 million pixels on screen.
Traditionally for all DLP projectors, the LX700 sometimes produces a slight rainbow effect.
Color Modes
The ViewSonic LX700-4K offers an eight picture modes, including Standard, Bright, Cinema, Gaming, sRGB, User, HDR, and HLG. The first six work in SDR, HDR and HLG are designed for HDR10 and HLG HDR content. In addition, the model has 3D picture mode. In principle, all modes offer approximately the same image quality. But sRGB uses lower brightness of ~900 ANSI lumens, and the brightest Bright has a heavy green bias.
Additionally, the Color and Tint settings are not adjustable for signals in the RGB color format, for examplle, from PC. This task can be solved using YCbCr color signals from video source.
Brightness settings have been simplified slightly and include:
– Constant Power from 100% to 50% with 5% increments;
– Eco;
– Dynamic Black.
The brightest picture mode in Bright provides up to 3,100 ANSI lumens, brightness in other modes range from 1,800 ANSI lumens to 2,200 ANSI lumens.
Unfortunately, ‘out-of-the-box’ color accuracy in SDR is not perfect. Most modes are shifted towards cool (blue) or warm (red).
For example, pre-calibration measurements in SDR showed 4.4dE – 7.2dE for DeltaE (good <3). But post-calibration values improved to 2.7dE on average with a max of 5.8dE. In addition, adjusting the Color Temperature to Standard or Warm is quite effective. HDR content is played more natural, but color saturation seems insufficient in some scenes.
Color gamut is typical for Laser Phosphor light engine and covers almost 97% in Rec.709 standard, almost 80% for the DCI-P3 color space, and ~57% for BT.2020.
Key Features
The ViewSonic LX700-4K is designed with a primary focus on gaming, fully capitalizing on the capabilities of Xbox branded consoles. In addition, the model supports 1440p@120Hz and 4K@60Hz, providing sufficient performance even for competitive gaming on large screens.
Manual focus, 1.36x optical zoom and 0-15% vertical lens shift make installing the projector much easier. Regardless of placement on a tabletop or mounted on the ceiling, LX700 supports both front / rear projection.
The model produces images from 30″ to 300″ diagonally at its throw ratio of 1.06 – 1.45:1 from a distance of 2.1 – 29 ft or 1.0 – 7.0 m (100″@7ft).
Additionally, the LX700-4K offers a digital zoom range of 0.8 to 2.0x, horizontal and vertical keystone adjustment, four-corner adjustment, and 3×3 warp. But like other projectors, these functions are automatically disabled when Ultra-Fast Input mode is activated in games.
Unfortunately, the on-board 15W speaker does not have EQ modes, which excludes its customization. As a result, there is not enough bass in some tracks. Of course, the eARC support successfully solves this problem by using an external audio system. But to be fair, sound by Harman Kardon in X2-4K seems to be the best solution.
The model has two HDMI 2.0 inputs, but there is no high bandwidth HDMI 2.1 port for 4K@120Hz play. However, this situation is typical for many current DLP gaming projectors. Perhaps manufacturers continue to wait for the announced powerful TI’s DLP chipset.
Conclusion
Pros
– ADLP 3.0-based laser phosphor light source;
– superb input lag (4.2ms for 1080p@240Hz, 9ms – 1080p@120Hz and 18ms – 1080p@60Hz);
– 3,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio;
– Designed for Xbox certification;
– Vertical Lens Shift;
– compact (7.3lbs@13 x 29 x 22 cm);
– 1440p@60Hz/120Hz support;
– 3D support;
– eARC (Enhanced Audio Return Channel provides full resolution audio transmission).
Cons
– suboptimal out-of-box color settings;
– no dedicated 2-point white balance control;
– no EQ modes in built-in speaker.
The American company once again confirmed its right to a place among industry leaders. Probably, the mid-focal ViewSonic LX700 is inferior in ease of placement to ultra short throw (UST) models, which are placed close to the screen without creating problems with wires on the floor. Of course, the model offers a traditional ceiling mount, but it’s quite complex and troublesome.
Its color accuracy and EQ-free onboard audio are inferior to most Home Theater models.
But the projector is designed as a gaming model with 1440p@60Hz/120Hz support, input lag of jast 4.2ms for 1080p@240Hz, and designed for Xbox certification. In fact, these factors expand its capabilities from Xbox level to competitive gaming with PlayStation, Nintendo, and PC. This projector is ideal for fans of gaming on a huge screen.
Moreover, the company offers an affordable price. For comparison, the price of BenQ X3100i reaches $2,280. Therefore, $ 1,600 is a very competitive price. Overall, the superb price-quality ratio promises the projector cloudless marketing prospects and, possibly, a place among the bestsellers in the gaming segment.
This video demonstrates the new gaming ViewSonic LX700-4K laser projector.
