Projector Reviews

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Say your Great-Aunt Edna died and left you $10,000 or so in her will with the stipulation that you had to spend it on a home theater system (that's why she always was your favorite great-aunt). You and I could while away the better part of an evening arguing the particulars of what gear to buy—and especially how the money should be divided between the audio and video parts of the system.

• $1,999 (est. street price)
• 1280x768 single-chip DLP
• Key Connections: One HDMI input

Features We Like: Faroudja processing

PRICE $1,500

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Portable
Auto-focus feature
Good-quality built-in audio
Minus
Below-average contrast
Poor HDR performance
Somewhat pricey

THE VERDICT
ViewSonic's X10-4KE is a cool- looking portable projector that delivers underwhelming performance given its $1,500 price tag.

The portable video projector market is packed with options for anyone seeking a convenient, compact beamer to carry from room to room, indoors to outdoors, or home to vacation home. Most portable models top out at 1080p resolution, however, and feature only basic, and usually far from adequate, built-in audio capabilities. With its X10-4KE, ViewSonic is targeting a more discerning portable video viewer—one who expects 4K resolution and high dynamic range, along with better-than-average audio from the projector's built-in speakers.

Price: $15,000 At A Glance: LEDs promise longevity, consistent performance • Excellent color • Good contrast mitigated by unrefined dynamic contrast performance

Get the LED In

The last few years have been a golden age for digital front projection in home theater applications. Today’s best projectors offer an absolutely stellar combination of price, convenience, essential features, and most importantly, performance. In virtually all of these respects, today’s digital projectors shatter any expectations we had a few years ago. But there is a rub. Digital projection as we’ve known it has been driven by analog lamps for illumination. These lamps, which generally cost $300 to $500 each, age and need to be replaced every couple of thousand hours. If you insist on the very best performanceyou may need to replace them even sooner. In addition to dropping light output, aging lamps also affect a projector’s color performance, gammaand gray-scale tracking. Inother words, the lamp-driven projector you buy today isn’t the same projector you’ll have after several hundred hours without a touch-up calibration.

PRICE $1,699

AT A GLANCE
Plus
Bright, detailed 4K image
Excellent auto-setup features
Potent built-in audio system
LED lamp provides 25,000 hours use
Minus
Limited contrast ratio
Non-backlit remote control
Picture adjustments reset to default after unplugging

THE VERDICT
XGMI's pricey portable delivers crisp, bright 4K images along with auto-setup features that make it incredibly easy to get up and running.

Even as TVs grow ever-larger, the projector category continues to be an active one, with more recent designs like ultra short throw models giving viewers an alternative to room-dominating hang- from-ceiling setups. And while we here at Sound & Vision typically advocate for high-performance, and accordingly high-priced, options, the reality is that much of the action in the global projector scene involves affordable lower- end models, many from brands you may have not heard of before.

During a panel discussion at the recent Home Entertainment 2003 show in San Francisco, a few of the panelists (including me) indicated that, despite all the new flat-screen imaging technologies found in front projectors, rear-projection TVs, and plasma and LCD monitors, our preference was still for images created by CRTs. A manufacturer's representative on the panel retorted that CRTs were fine in their day, but that his company was in the business of providing the nearest thing to a theater experience in the home—and CRTs just don't cut the mustard anymore.

If you're familiar with the look of Yamaha's last two flagship DLP projectors, this latest version will definitely give you a case of déjà vu. But that's true of the latest projectors from most manufacturers. The world of home video projection is moving too fast to design new cosmetics for every new model.