Electronics Panasonic PT-AX200U 720p 3LCD Home Theater Projector
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Rating: - Some reviews you can ignore?
This is not a review of this specific product just a general opinion. If you read alot of reviews as I do, you will find that there are about 10% you must question. These are the reviews that are the generally negative and in most cases 180% from the other reviews. They almost always tell the prospective buyer to go with some other product which they name. These reviews are likely from people who represent that competing company that simply want to lower the score of the reviewed product in hopes of promoting their own. If you check a product and twenty people say it is great and one person says it was a nightmare beyond belief and then says if you want a great one buy.......? These are the reviews that can be dismiss.

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Rating: - A really wonderful projector at a remarkably low price point
A terrific quality product, and very bright. I paired mine with the Duet Portable Projector Screen, and I am fully satisfied with the resulting image, with its visibility and crispness and size (80-inch diagonal). I have hooked up both a PS3 (HDMI) and DVD player (S-Video) to it, and they work great.

The PT-AX200U has an output capable of 2000 lumens, which ultimately means that you can enjoy this projector in the middle of the day, even with ambient light streaming through your blinds.

Originally, I was comparing this projector with many 1080p projectors. Ultimately, I felt I could either get a high-end 720p projector or a low-end 1080p one, and the low-end 1080p would have been more than double the price. I decided on the Panasonic in particular due to its great reputation, its brightness output, and its settings easily configurable for both movies and gaming.

Despite the PT-AX200U being more than a year old at this point, the machine doesn't feel aged a bit. I think this is one of those times in the world of technology where you can really enjoy the price drop but not be missing any features. I can see myself enjoying this same product even if I bought it years from now.

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Rating: - Worked great until the bulb went... at 290 hours
I don't have too much to add on what other people have said - it's a great projector. My projector-owning friends compared it quite favorably with the ones they own... it just has such bright, crisp images. I was very happy with my purchase.

However - the other day, after about one year and 290 hours of use (I am not a heavy user!), something was clearly wrong with the image. The colors were not saturated, the image was dull... brightness was lacking. One more evening of that, and then it wouldn't start up - the "Lamp" indicator light was flashing. I will be ordering a new lamp, but it's far from cheap. I'm pretty upset, as I don't think I did anything in particular to make it die so early.

Hopefully this serves as a cautionary tale for those considering this product.

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Rating: - Haven't been this satisfied with an electronics purchase in over a decade.
I'd been shopping around for a new gaming display for Wii, PS3, Laptop through DVI, and movies, for a very long time, to replace my monster 36" 300lb CRT. First I went with a 46" LCD that just had too much lag, GHOSTING, grayish blacks, banding on the image, all these problems, and ended up returning it. Then a friend recommended I try the projector route. I was at first skeptical but eventually read a bunch of very helpful reviews on projectorreviews.com, and decided to go with this one, as it is marketed by Panasonic as a "gaming projector"

4 months of owning it and now I would never go back to anything else. Ever. Every one of my friends who sees this thing in action says the same thing - even one who has a massive 1080p 70" Sony rear projection set. This thing is just stellar, the image is sharp, very bright - even in a dimly lit room, and vibrant with great contrast and colors, no lag or ghosting, perfectly complements the high gain 100" gray glass beaded screen I bought for it (I recommend these over a plain white any day - see pictures)
There is no rainbow effect since it is a 3LCD projector, it is fairly quiet and does not have any sort of screen door effect, and ghosting is very very minimal - no more than a CRT or any other display. It also has a crazy amount of advanced image tweaking options that I've never seen on even the most expensive sony XBR LCD's.

The short throw lens is very flexible and can easily fill a 100" screen from less than 24 feet. I place mine in front of the viewers, on a table, angled slightly up with its adjustable feet, and found it gave a better picture than putting it behind and high above viewers. The viewing angle is very good - much better than the LCD it replaced, and is best achieved by placing it with the lens closer to the level of your head. The lens can be shifted all over the place with the little joystick and locked into place by twisting it, and the focal and zoom rings are very precise and have a nice feel.

Sure, it's not 1080p, and I wrestled with this issue a lot before buying it, but now I see that it really wouldn't matter unless i was trying to push this thing past maybe 150" or more. Also, most ps3 games only support 720p anyway, and the wii is only 480p - and taking into account the great value to performance ratio of this thing, I don't miss 1080p at all.

Even taking into account the bulb replacement costs (about $250 for each ~2000 hour bulb), I still feel it's worth it and cannot stress how much I love this thing. I beat Metal Gear Solid 4 on it and it was a transcendental experience to play through it on such a huge and beautiful display.

The only bad thing I can think of about this projector is that the lens cap is manual - you have to clip it on when you're done. I would have preferred a nice automatic one that shuts over the lens when you switch it off.

One final note - this projector is MADE IN JAPAN! How often do you see that any more? All the LCDs and Plasmas I looked at were all made in china, taiwan, mexico and all these other places that I feel have much much lower quality control standards than Japan. Made me feel very good about this product.