The Sony VPL-HW45ES is a great home cinema projector with amazing contrast, vibrant colors, and great brightness.

This Sony has a contrast ratio of 120,000:1. It produces very deep blacks. The dark colors are unusually dark even in ambient light. This also helps with the colors, which are very realistic and deep, creating a bit of a three-dimensional picture feeling.

The projector has 1,800 lumens of white brightness and the same amount of color brightness. This balance means that the colors are stunningly precise at every level of brightness.

This Sony is great for gaming, since the input lag is measured at 22ms, which is pretty much as low as it gets.

The VPL-HW45ES has 3D support. The image quality in 3D is just as good as in 2D. Though, just as any other 3D projector, the image brightness suffers in 3D mode due to dark glasses. In addition, it has a built in RF 3D Sync transmitter. This provides you with a wider viewing angle and flexible sitting positioning.

It has 8 color presets and one User mode, which are all customizable to your taste. It's easy to calibrate the colors to make the content look as good as possible.

DLP projectors often show flashes of red, green, and blue on bright objects in darker movie scenes. Like LCD projectors, it barely shows any rainbow artifacts thanks to its three-chip SXRD (brand name for LCoS - liquid crystal on silicon) technology.

The fans are very quiet, making only 22 dB of noise. This is one of the quietest projectors out there.

It has 1.6x manual zoom lens plus vertical and horizontal lens shift. This makes the projector very versatile when setting it up. It's easy to position the picture on the screen.

It has a lamp-life of 6,000 hours, which will last for 6-7 years if you watch a movie a day. Though all lamps lose brightness over time so you might want to replace it earlier. Replacement are available for around $300.