![]() There are no single best home theater projectors or home entertainment projectors – for everyone shopping around a particular price point. I will at least try to always point out, for example, that “why this projector beat out that one for such-and-such award was the great black levels, vs, lower price, or quieter operation” where applicable. To me, achieving excellent black levels, for example, is more important than a small improvement in sharpness. There are plenty of under $2000 projectors that do a great job on bright and average lit scenes, as good as many significantly more expensive projectors, but the differences on very dark scenes are technically not the difference between “night and day” but can be extremely dramatic. To me, when you put a projector in your cave or home theater and get to a really dark scene in a movie, that’s what separates a great projector from a good one. Consider one bias that I will remind you of in the awards – I’m big on black level performance in home theater projectors (but not near as concerned with home entertainment projectors – none of which really have good black levels anyway). Bias isn’t a bad thing, it’s just one more piece of information. My picks are subjective, and they reflect my well-known biases, or if you prefer – my priorities. As I like to say: “If they did everything well, they wouldn’t be ‘entry-level’ projectors, would they?”Īnd that folks, is the same concept that makes reviewing and awards subjective. Some things they do well, and other things poorly. In other words, in the $1000 to $2500 class, the fact that one projector sells for $1200 and another for $1900 will affect our rankings, as it should! But, if the list price is $1999 and a few dealers are at $1799, that would have little impact.Įntry Level Projector Compromises: To state the obvious, the projectors in the Entry Level class – Under $1000, have a lot of trade-offs, (as do most more expensive ones, but this is especially true for entry-level models). I do consider the street pricing, if significantly lower, in making decisions relating to awards, but, even if that won’t affect what price class the projector is placed in. There’s always some low baller, and sometimes they offer gray market goods and therefore not full US warranties, so we won’t let them distort the normal selling price for purposes of evaluating value. Also, when we speak of “street price,” we are referring to the typical price when the projector is sold by authorized dealers. Our classes are organized by List Price (or in more than a few cases, what the manufacturer sells that projector for on their own site, when at a lower price). (We’d love it if JVC sent us their top of the line, for comparison!) Finally, we’ve got a $20,000+ class, which, at this time, is only populated by three Sony models. Moving to more expensive projectors, the next class is now $5000 to $20,000. In addition to that, in this 2018 Best Home Theater Projectors Report, we changed the next “class” up to $2500 - $5000. Now, we have that Entry Level Class called “Under $1000.” Next up is the $1000 - $2500 class. Since then, because of changes in the market – especially lower prices in general – we started an Under $1000 class for Entry Level. For example, a few years back, our “Entry Level” class included projectors under $2000. We routinely change the price points for the classes as best seems to suit the group of projectors we are dealing with. It’s included because it is one of the best selling under $1000 projectors out there. One final exception that I mention is a particular low-cost projector that we didn’t review, but did review its very similar predecessor. I’ve seen the UHD60 in action, and since last year’s report, we did bring in the UHD60 but not for a full review. The differences: the color wheel, and therefore the lumens. Then, there’s the Optoma UHD60, a lower cost, non-identical twin to the UHD65, which I reviewed (and really liked). Certainly the aforementioned Epson and several other older projectors picked up awards again this year! It would be a shame to exclude such projectors just because they are a year or more old. ![]() This year, there’s definitely more competition, but the 5040UB is still with us, and still one of the most competitive projectors around. Good blacks although scene too bright for the iris to be very effectiveĮxample – the Epson 5040UB, which was excellent last year and had little competition. Scene from the end of Ghostbusters 2016: 4K with HDR, lots of pop to the image. ![]()
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