Projector Buying Guide: 5 Tips You Should Know!
Summary
- Define your use case: Determine your needs before purchasing, whether for home theater or business presentations. 🎥
- Prioritize key specifications—resolution, brightness, color gamut, and input latency—to meet your specific needs. 🌈
- Installation Considerations: Pay attention to projection distance, projection surface, mounting and control options ambient light. 🛠️
Buying your first projector can be intimidating with so much technical jargon and confusing messaging about this alternative to flat-screen TVs. But if you stick to the basics and don't get carried away by the hype, you can get it right from the start! 💡
Define your use case
The most important thing you should do before anything else is to define what you will use the projector for. Just like televisions and monitors, projectors are made to cover different needs.
If you're building a top-tier home theater, then you should look into native 4K laser projectors. If you just want a premium experience at a good price, pixel-shifting 4K projectors are an ideal choice. If you simply want to put the game on a big screen when your friends come over or watch Blu-ray movies, a 1080p LED projector is probably more than enough.
It also matters whether you're doing a permanent installation or if the projector needs to be transported or stored. 4K laser projectors are heavy, while there are lightweight, (optionally) battery-powered projectors, like the The Freestyle from Samsung. 📦
Similarly, if you need a projector for business presentations, you might also want to consider features like more connector types than just HDMI. If you're looking for a projector for video games, the important aspects of the specification sheet are very different compared to something that just has to project PowerPoint slides.
Key performance factors that matter
Like TVs, projectors have complex spec sheets full of terms and numbers, but you only need to pay attention to a few important ones:
- Resolution: Native 1080p resolution should be your minimum acceptable, taking into account alternative options native 4K or pixel-shifting projectors.
- Glow: Measured in lumens. For a darkroom, a range of 1,500 to 2,000 lumens is acceptable, but these days you should aim for 2,500–3,500 lumens if possible. ☀️
- Color range: Just like on TVs or monitorsColor gamut and accuracy are important for certain types of tasks. If this is important to you, look for a projector with a wide color gamut, and for movie lovers, an HDR projector is ideal. However, a good HDR projector can be quite expensive. 🎨
- Input latency: This is important for the video games or any real-time application that is time-sensitive. As with televisions, high latency can make using interactive software unpleasant or even impossible. Projectors that offer a "game mode" will try to keep latency low, but often at the expense of image quality. 🎮
If these key specifications are good, then you're well on your way to getting the projector you need.
Installing and positioning your projector
Setting up a projector correctly is just as important as buying the right model, and there are four key things to consider here.
Throw distance is how far the projector is from the screen or wall where the image will appear. Short-throw projectors are now available that can be placed head-on against a wall, making installation much easier in places where only TVs were previously practical. However, they are more expensive than traditional projectors, so if you can mount a long-throw projector on the ceiling, for example, you could save money.
The projection surface is another important factor. There's no point in buying a great projector if the projection surface destroys the image qualityThe simplest solution is to buy a projector screen, and something between 100 and 120 inches seems to be the sweet spot for most people. If you want something larger, you'll need a projector that can produce those image sizes and, of course, have a long enough throw distance. 📏
Projecting onto a bare wall is also a good option, but you'll want to prepare the wall to make sure it's smooth and then use projector screen paint to get the right level of reflection for a sharp, bright, and colorful image. 🎨
The third factor is how you'll mount the projector or where you'll place it: ceiling mounting or placing the projector on an elevated pedestal of some kind is ideal. If you can't position the projector perfectly due to room limitations, features like lens shift or keystone correction will be crucial to getting a well-adjusted image. 🔧
The fourth important consideration is ambient light control. Can you dim the room? If not, you'll want to look for a model with high lumen specifications, as I mentioned earlier. ☀️
More advanced connectivity and features
All modern projectors will have an HDMI input, and in some cases you'll want to look for HDMI 2.1 for 4K models, but there are some connections that are nice to have beyond the basics:
- Connections for computers Such as VGA, DVI, or DisplayPort can be useful if you want to connect laptops or desktop systems, especially for business use. If you want to connect older AV equipment, analog ports such as composite can be useful, but nowadays you can use an HDMI converter for that. 🔌
- If your projector has built-in media playback capability, a USB port is very handy for playing files directly on the projector without the need for another device. This is also useful for powering some Streaming devices that can run on power USB. 📺
- Smart features, where the projector basically houses the “guts” of a smart TV, are also a great feature, meaning you won't need any extra equipment beyond the projector to play content. 📱
While 3D TVs are practically dead, 3D projectors still exist. This means you can also enjoy a 3D movie experience without going to a public theater. Unfortunately, 3D content is quite scarce, so this is a very specialized and niche product. 🌌
Projector maintenance and lifespan
Although things have improved considerably these days, projectors require more maintenance and generally have a shorter lifespan than TVs. A traditional lamp-powered projector might last 5,000 hours, but modern LED projectors can exceed 20,000 hours. Laser projectors push the lifespan even further, commonly reaching over 30,000 hours.
However, no projector will reach its potential lifespan without proper maintenance and operation. You must keep the air filters clean, ensure there is sufficient ventilation, and (in this digital age) ensure that the firmware and software are up to date. Just in case there are efficiency improvements or bug fixes that can be leveraged.
Now it's time to go projector shopping, so familiarize yourself with the different types of projectors and find the home theater experience of your dreams. 🌟
