Colour reproduction is extremely pure and accurate. The unit was set up using a Minolta colorimeter and delivered a best-in-class performance. Fidelity is first-rate. All the primary colours appeared rich and intense, and Earth, which is shot in a variety of surroundings, from the Arctic to the tropical rainforest, looked subtle and engaging even in very poorly-lit scenes.

Blacks hardly ever drifted into the undifferentiated greys that many projectors are so adept at generating, except in the case of poorly-engineered material received from a satellite dish where the fault clearly lay with the source material. DarkChip 4 delivers an inherently smooth image, free from unwanted pixel structure. It's incredibly filmic.

For the record, I noted traces of what is commonly described as colour flashing or rainbow effect in areas of stark contrast. The causes of this effect are more complex than is often supposed, and there are multiple factors at play. The effect was more obvious in scenes with movement (that is, which require eye movement to track), and in scenes that included a lot of super-contrasty material. You'll probably see it when your eyes are working overtime following the action. For most users, I would suggest that this is a non-issue in practice.

The other effect that I identified was a hint – and it was just a hint – of video noise in large, brightly-lit areas, in particularly action scenes, or those that were in motion. Pause the picture and the effect dissipates. Again this is a micro quibble, but I have no doubt that the observation is real.

I suspect it was related to the colour processing, and is perhaps made more obvious thanks to the unusually high inherent resolution of the projected image, which arises in part because the usual grid between rows and columns of pixels is effectively banished in this incarnation of TI's DMD. Or it could be an anomaly of the Blu-ray used for the bulk of my viewing sessions. Significantly, the HCC Tech Lab team did not identify any noise issues when the model went for independent evaluation.

Best of breed

All this might suggest that projection technology has not yet been perfected, but in truth these are just pedantic observations that could diminish my appraisal when read in isolation. So let me quickly qualify by stating that this is an extremely fine DLP projector – probably amongst the best I have seen.

It's images look natural, screen presence is considerable, blacks are pure, and the subtlety of tones across its spectrum is nothing less than exquisite. It's a genuine challenger to the Reference throne currently occupied by SIM2's Grand Cinema C3X1080, a similarly priced high-end DLP, albeit a three-chipper that is therefore free of the aforementioned rainbow effect.

Still, overall, this is a model I would love to own...

Follow TechRadar reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview