From budget to 4K, here are the best projectors to replace your TV. Vava says its working on getting more, but right now, the only really useful ones were YouTube and Disney Plus. Thats easier than it may seem because the Epson 2150 has automatic keystoning. Audio isnt bad either. It is a DLP projector that uses a laser light source instead of bulb. But since its a projector, I think its nicer to look at. It connects to the internet, downloads software, and since its connected to the internet, every time you turn it on, it asks you to update. At maximum volume, you can still hear the fan if the projector is near your head. Its brightness of 3000 lumens isnt very bright, so if youre trying to get a bigger image, like 200 inches or more, youll need darkness. Use cinema mode, which has deep blacks, for watching a movie at night. Its bright enough to watch during the day without a screen, though pulling the shades down on your windows always helps. Since movie theaters arent an option for most people right now, a lot of friends have been asking me what projector to get for their living room. There are many reasons you might want a projector over a TV: you may want a bigger image than a TV can offer, or you dont like the look of a TV in your living room, or you want to have casual movie nights with your friends or family. Its a 1080p LCD projector with a great, bright image, good speakers, and its extremely easy to set up. The Optoma HD146X is a good projector if you dont want to spend more than a few hundred dollars. You can watch this with some ambient daylight, but definitely not when theres unfiltered light pouring in through a window. Every tiny bump refracts light and creates small shadows, so the image ultimately loses quality and brightness. Its extremely bright and crisp with great color. So even though the image is technically the best and the brightest that I tested, Id only recommend this if you really dont want to get a TV, but basically want a TV, and you have a big budget. All in all, the Epson 2150 offers an enjoyable experience: its easy to use and provides a bright, crisp image. The BenQ TH671ST is ideal if you have a limited amount of room but still want a projector instead of a TV. The Vava also projects at 4K resolution, compared to the 1080p of most other models. Toggling to dynamic mode makes for the best daytime image, which is a great thing about Epson projectors: you can easily switch between viewing modes, and each one looks great. Keystoning is important because it allows you to straighten out the image so the projector doesnt need to be perfectly parallel with the wall. The UHD52ALV costs $1,799, so theres still a premium for its higher resolution. But if youre trying to do a movie night with friends or you have loud street noise, Id recommend speakers, which you can hook up through a 3.5mm audio output. Then theres the throw ratio, which is how big the image is in relation to how far it is from the surface. The Epson Home Cinema 2150 provides the best blend of image quality, ease of use, and price. But LCD makes a low lumen count seem brighter and more vibrant than a DLP projector with the same rating. It has 3000 lumens of brightness but with a screen you can watch in daylight. If you have a small, dark room, this projector is great for it. Projectors with a laser source are not lamp-based, so they require less maintenance; on average, the laser lasts 5x longer than a bulb would. The vivid or cinema modes are much nicer. Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to the Vava projector as a fully laser-based system it is not. Whether this design is preferable really comes down to your space and needs, but it does have some drawbacks. I used an inexpensive 80-inch Panoview pop-up screen you can find a similar one for around $100 but it still made for a better experience than just pointing the projector at my wall. It has two 10w speakers, so its louder and sounds much better than most of the other projectors I tested. You can also use a laptop, Apple TV, or whatever device you use to stream video. And as for content, every projector I tested has an HDMI input, internal speakers, and also an audio output, so I was easily able to stream things by plugging in my Roku stick. Theres also a manual lens shift so you can raise or lower the image, and a manual focus. Meanwhile, short-throw projectors can project a large image with only a few feet between them and the wall, and ultra-short-throw projectors are basically right up against the wall. Making the image smaller can better help combat the ambient light in a bright room. The best projector for your home or apartment. The fans are also loud, though, and it gets hot. You can spend a lot more on high-end, dedicated home theater projectors. It has an app store, but there are barely any useful apps. The image is great: its big, its bright, and the color reproduction is pretty. The image quality is closest to that from a TV. Also, the image bends a little on the sides. The Vava Laser TV has excellent 4K image quality and impressive sound. I didnt find the need for external speakers, but there is a 3.5mm audio output to hook them up if you want. And unlike a lamp-based projector, where a bulb emits light through a color wheel to produce the image, laser projectors generate only the exact colors needed for an image. Traditional projectors sit behind the viewer, ideally 10 to 20 feet away from the surface they project onto. Projector screens brighten the image noticeably depending on what theyre coated in. But basically, the important things are: how easy it is to set up, audio, image quality, and price. For those who want 4K resolution but dont want to spend nearly $3,000 for it, Optomas UHD52ALV is my recommendation. This means that, without moving the projector, you can have an image that ranges anywhere from 80 inches diagonally across to 132 inches across. But in practice, it doesnt feel that dim. The projectors fans are very quiet, and you can easily plug in speakers to its 3.5mm audio output, but its not totally necessary. The projector uses Rec. This efficiency makes for a much brighter image and very accurate colors and deep black levels and contrast. After three months and way too many movies, Ive found the projector best suited for most situations. A less expensive but still excellent projector is the Optoma HD146X. The 2150s built-in 10-watt speakers are loud. The Vava is a DLP projector, but as you can tell from the name, it uses a laser light source, which is brighter and more vibrant than the lamp-based DLP or LCD models. There are two 5-watt speakers, so it can get loud enough, but its a bit empty-sounding with not a lot of bass. Lastly, the HD146Xs built-in 3W speaker is not loud, but the fan is loud. The brightness is rated at 3500 lumens, which is just over half of what Vava claims. That great picture comes at a price, however: the Vava is the most expensive model I tested by over a thousand dollars. First, there are a lot of specs and choices to make when it comes to projectors: lumens, laser or lamp-based, DLP or LCD, 1080 or 4K, short-throw, zoom lenses, projection size theres a lot. Using the menus can be a chore, but once its set up, the image stays good when you make it bigger, too and it can get large: up to about 300 inches, which is double the Vava. LCDs tend to have a sharper, crisper image and appear brighter than DLPs even at a lower lumen count. The zoom lens is 1.6x, which is more than the average you get on most projectors in this range. If you want a really big image or if your space is a lot smaller, then you should get a short-throw projector. There are also manual knobs for focus, zoom, lens shift, and keystone, which are way easier to use than digital controls. In addition, the HD146X offers nice contrast, which produces a punchy image. The caveat is it doesnt project true 4K; it uses pixel shifting to double the 1920 x 1080 resolution for a total of approximately 4 million pixels. Even though the HD146X is one of Optomas less expensive options, the image still stands out. Low-end laser projectors are typically around $2,000, although you can find some smaller ones for less. You can get up to a 150-inch image if you move the projector 10-inches from the wall, but then it starts encroaching into your room. My top pick is the $899 Epson Home Cinema 2150. Lastly, the Vava gets a lot hotter than other projectors, enough to feel a difference in the room. If youre watching in a room with a lot of darkness and have external speakers, the HD146X will offer a great image at a price you cant beat for its quality. The surface you project on is important you can use a wall; white is best but it wont show off the projectors best self. Its manageable, though: if this projector is for your bedroom, the speaker will be fine. I would avoid putting this right next to your head. But for this test, we kept the budget as reasonable as possible. It provides much louder, fuller sound than the built-in speakers on all of the other projectors. 2020, or BT2020, which can produce more colors than the previous Rec. The Vava is much larger and heavier than traditional projectors, mostly due to the full 60W Harman Kardon soundbar built into it. So from about 11 feet away, it can get an image as small as 80 inches diagonally, all the way up to 100 inches. At five inches from the wall, the maximum image is 80 inches. The 2150 is an LCD projector, which gives it a crisp image even when projecting a 130-inch image, and it can project up to 300 inches. It has 1080p resolution, but unless youre in a completely dark theater with a screen, its not going to look noticeably different than 4K. The brightness, which is rated at 2500 lumens, is lower than youll see other projectors rated. It costs $549 and shares many of the same specs as the Epson 2150. The Epson Home Cinema 3800 combines a higher resolution with better sound quality. Its not as crisp as the 2150 either, again, due to it being DLP instead of LCD. Currently, there are five kinds of projectors you can get for your home: DLP, LCD, LED, LCOS, and laser. Like the HD146X, the bright mode on the UHD52ALV has a strong green tint, but cinema mode on it is beautiful. Most of the models I tested max out at 1080p resolution, but we do have a couple of 4K picks as well. Unlike traditional projectors that are mounted or set up on the opposite side of the room, the Vava is an ultra-short-throw projector. So to give them the best answer, I tested nine different projectors in my apartment. Out of all the projectors I tested, Optoma projectors have some of the nicest images. At 11 feet away, the image is about 100 inches, which is big, but I wish it could get even bigger. The best projector out of the models I tested the one Ill be recommending to my friends is the $899 Epson 2150. If youre plugging in a streaming device, you dont need the app store, but its still required to connect to the internet, so its just an unnecessary hassle. Before getting into specifics though, there are a few basics to think about when youre shopping for a projector. Its image is sharp even when its so big, but the colors, specifically the darks, are muddy. In terms of ease of use, its very similar to the Epson 2150 with manual knobs for zoom and focus. And you dont have to move the projector to change your image size. At $2,800, its triple the price of the Epson 2150 and more expensive than even OLED televisions. The 1.1x zoom lens has a shorter range than the 2150, so its hard to make the image really big in my apartment. But unless youre really investing in a proper home theater, most living room setups wont allow an average viewer to spot the difference between a good 1080p projector and a reasonably priced 4K projector. The audio is surprisingly loud for only having one 5W speaker. The BenQ TH671ST costs $750 and allows you to project a 100-inch image from a little less than five feet away. 709 that most other projectors use. The Optomas image modes are also less flexible, and the bright mode produces an unusably green image. It actually appears darker and less vibrant. Its hard to tell the difference, though. It was nearly impossible to get it perfect, which is just not acceptable for a $2,800 device. Another great 4K projector budget option is the Epson 3800 for $1,499. The color made it feel like watching film: everything has a golden, 1970s-style vibe to it, which I think is partly because of its color space. DLP, or digital light processing, and LCD projectors are lamp-based, so the bulb will eventually degrade, but theyre much more affordable than laser projectors. 4K projectors are a lot more expensive and not as common as 4K TVs because the pixels on projector chips are incredibly small. It goes right up against the wall and projects its image almost vertically against the wall. See our ethics statement. All of this comes at a much higher cost, however. The Optoma UHD52ALV is a good option if you want a 4K projector on a tighter budget. All of the settings are digital, including the focus, which I find very hard to know if its accurate. We regret the error. For this test, I looked at DLP and LCD types, which are common for home projectors and also one DLP projector that utilizes a laser light source instead of a bulb, ranging in price from $530 to $2,800. If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. Youll benefit a lot from getting a projector screen, especially if youll be watching with a little daylight. Theres a manual 1.3x zoom adjustment. The biggest difference is that its a DLP projector, so its rated 3600 lumens of brightness dont make it brighter than the 2150. But if youre viewing in the middle of the day, youll likely need to put your shades down, especially if you dont have a screen. If price is less important than image quality, Vavas Laser TV is a compelling option. This zoom lens paired with all of the other controls makes the projector really flexible and easy to use; if you move or if you end up putting the projector in a different room, youll be able to customize it to the new space very quickly. DLPs tend to be smaller and more portable, and they offer more contrast and blacker blacks. There were a few other things I didnt like about Vava: the setup process was annoying by far the most intensive.
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