The Stewart Deluxe FireHawk costs 2,155 GBP, an average price for a 110-inch screen — but there’s nothing average about the quality.

Reviewed by Florian Friedrich on February 8, 2010

Phenomenal contrast.
Neutral colours.
Suitable for bright rooms.

Not ideal for darkened environments.
Obvious hotspot.

If ambient light excludes all other screens from the running, spare a thought for the FireHawk. Another option in this case is the DNP Supernova, which Televisions.com has also reviewed.

Features

Technical Details

An obvious brightness difference: On the right, we see an A4 sample of the StudioTek 130, also from Stewart; on the left is the FireHawk reviewed here.

The FireHawk uses the most extreme material type of the Stewart range. Even though the screen looks relatively dark in normal, ambient light, it reflects the projector’s light with a gain factor of 1.1 — so long as you’re sitting in the ideal viewing position. Because the material is almost grey, the screen needs to be slightly reflective in order to achieve this high brightness. The problem with reflection, however, is that it leads to a visible hotspot.

Especially the highly uniform pictures of a DLP projector look rather non-uniform on this screen. Despite the FireHawk — like the GrayHawk — coming from Stewart’s third-generation range, which uses smaller reflective particles, its structure is still visible in 1080p projections. In camera pans across smooth areas of colour — a blue sky, for example — you notice fine static details that don’t belong in the picture. While the neutral colours and high contrast help, these plus points can’t really save the FireHawk as far as home cinema is concerned.