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We have added new projectors from JVC, LG, Optoma and Sony to our expectations.
No matter what you watch today or what you plan to watch tomorrow, JVC DLA-NX5 is the best 4K projector for dedicated home theater. It has the highest contrast and the best black level of all the projectors we tested under $10,000, as well as true 4K resolution, HDR support and a wider color gamut. Your 4K movie will have all the pop and depth required for an advanced home theater experience.
Of all the projectors we tested, JVC DLA-NX5 produced the best overall image.
JVC DLA-NX5 has excellent contrast, rich colors and excellent details, which is the best performance of HD and 4K video. The projector's dynamic tone mapping of HDR signals is excellent, so it does the best at preserving all the details in bright highlights. It supports almost all the wider DCI/P3 color gamuts currently used for 4K content, so you will see richer reds, blues, and greens. Its motorized lens system and built-in picture presets for specific screens make it easy to set up without the need for professional installers. DLA-NX5 is not a good choice for living room or other shared spaces (we have other suggestions for this), and it is larger than any other projector we have tested (once it is used, you don’t want to move it to install), But it performed well in the home theater room.
Home Cinema 5050UB supports HDR and wide color gamut technology, but it cannot match the detail or contrast of the best 4K projectors.
*At the time of publication, the price was US$3,000.
If you want a projector that looks great in 1080p content but can also display improved colors and HDR highlight details in 4K content, the price of Epson Home Cinema 5050UB is excellent. This projector can accept 4K signals and use a 1080p LCD panel and optical displacement to simulate 4K resolution, but it is not a native 4K projector like JVC DLA-NX5. It supports HDR10 playback, covers almost as many DCI color gamuts as JVC DLA-NX5, and provides fully automatic lens control and flexible setting options.
Of all the projectors we tested, JVC DLA-NX5 produced the best overall image.
Home Cinema 5050UB supports HDR and wide color gamut technology, but it cannot match the detail or contrast of the best 4K projectors.
*At the time of publication, the price was US$3,000.
I have been reviewing the projector for nearly ten years, and I am an ISF Level 2 certified calibrator. I have test equipment to provide all the measurements needed to objectively evaluate the performance of the projector, as well as the light control environment in which the tests are performed. I have actually evaluated dozens of projectors with prices ranging from US$300 to US$65,000, and I have professionally calibrated the projectors.
If you want to transform the basement or spare room into your own personal 4K theater, you need a dedicated home theater projector. These projectors are designed for rooms that provide complete lighting control. Compared to low-priced models, one of the main improvements of these projectors is the ability to produce deeper blacks, giving you better contrast-the difference between the darkest and brightest parts of the image. Ambient light in the room (such as windows without curtains) will wash away the black. You can still use home theater projectors during the day, provided that there are blackout curtains or hoods in the room, but if you cannot control the light, you will lose most of the advantages these projectors provide over cheaper models, and we are cheaper One of the suggestions might be a better choice.
Epson Home Cinema 3800 combines high brightness, excellent picture quality and convenient setting tools, making it our favorite living room projector.
BenQ HT2050A's top-notch contrast, bright output and impressive color accuracy make it our best budget home theater projector of choice.
Home theater projectors can also be used with high-quality projector screens, preferably with positive gain (the amount of light reflected back to the audience), rather than a pure white or gray screen. If you use a wall, the image of the projector will be 50% to 70% darker than the image with a suitable screen, and HDR will not work at all. Getting some gain will make the image brighter-albeit at the cost of viewing angle-and allow you to see more HDR highlights. All the projectors we reviewed produce enough light to work on screens up to about 130 inches diagonally, although HDR performance will drop on large screens.
Dedicated home theater projectors are specifically designed for rooms that provide complete lighting control.
Likewise, you should only consider using a home theater projector if you can permanently install it on the ceiling. These models are too big to be placed on a stool or coffee table in the living room, and they are not designed to move at will. Although the size of an entry-level projector is equivalent to a few stacked laptops or textbooks, the size of a home theater projector is closer to a home theater receiver, so you should put it aside.
A projector designed for a dedicated home theater room does not have any built-in speakers, so a separate sound system is required. They also only have a pair of HDMI inputs, so you may need something else to switch between sources. Usually, these projectors are paired with AV receivers that handle both of these tasks, but remember that you need something to handle the sound and input switching for you. In addition, these projectors do not have a TV tuner, so if you watch wireless broadcasts, you need to get an external tuner.
When choosing an AV receiver, sound quality is important, but finding a receiver with the required features is crucial, so we provide a number of suggestions.
Stylish design and outstanding sound make the combination of Polk Signature Series S15, S10 and S35 our best surround sound system choice.
If you want the best AV presentation of your favorite movies, we recommend 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs, the Panasonic DP-UB420 is the best player we have tested.
The best projectors have excellent image quality, but what does this mean? A beautiful image has four elements: contrast, brightness, color accuracy and color gamut.
Contrast, the difference between the darkest part and the brightest part of an image, is the most important factor affecting image quality. A low-contrast projector (or TV) will appear flat, faded, and boring. Many new projectors support high dynamic range, which is designed to show a larger range between the brightest and darkest parts of the image. To watch HDR videos, you need content in a special format and a projector that can play the content correctly.
Brightness, also known as the light output of the projector, is crucial. This determines how big the screen you can have, the type of screen you can have (more on that later), and of course, it also determines the brightness of the image. Home theater projectors do not need to be as bright as TVs because they are not usually used in bright rooms, but higher brightness is good for HDR content.
Color accuracy refers to the degree to which the projector displays colors on the screen to be consistent with the original content. If the director and photographer want the shirt to have a specific color when shooting a movie, a projector with high color accuracy will ensure that you see that color on the screen. It also ensures that your grayscale (from black to white) is neutral gray and has no hue.
Color gamut refers to how many colors the projector can display. Ultra HD content has a wider color gamut than standard HD content; currently, most UHD content uses the same DCI/P3 color gamut as cinema theaters (the ultimate goal is a larger Rec 2020 color gamut). This expanded color gamut allows the projector to display richer reds, blues, and greens than ever before. Many projectors can't display all these shadows, but some can.
All projectors use one of three technologies to create images: LCD (liquid crystal display), LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) or DLP (digital light processing). DLP has some advantages over LCD and LCoS, namely better motion resolution, lower 3D crosstalk, and better overall image uniformity. However, LCD and LCoS projectors generally provide higher contrast, which can make DLP projectors look washed out and flat when you view images side by side. (In addition, some people are susceptible to the "rainbow effect" common to cheap DLP projectors, because bright objects seem to have rainbow trajectories.) Therefore, although many of our budget projector recommendations are based on DLP, LCD and LCoS Projectors are usually a better choice for high-end home theaters.
Now that 4K content and playback equipment are easily available—in the form of 4K Blu-ray players and streaming media devices—our priority has shifted to home theater projectors that can accept and correctly display 4K HDR signals, although we have also considered some Lower-priced 1080p model.
In addition to the image quality characteristics we described above, in order to evaluate 4K projectors, we first considered four basic questions:
We hope that any 4K projector we test supports at least three of these features, although some features are more important than others.
Curiously, whether the projector is "true" 4K is the least important feature for overall image quality. Some projectors (such as JVC DLA-NX5 and Sony VPL-VW295ES) use 4K panels to display full resolution natively; others (such as Epson 5050UB) use a process called light shift, in which they manipulate the lens The output of the 1,920 pixel wide chip is used to generate the image. Both methods produce more screen details than those obtained from a 1080p projector, but they are implemented in different ways (to be frank, most of the "4K" content you can watch today has been upgraded from a 2K digital master ).
For the overall 4K image quality, what is more important is the ability of the projector to accept and correctly display the high dynamic range information of the video. HDR is more difficult to evaluate on a projector than on a TV. Since the brightness of a projector depends on many factors, including screen size, projection distance, screen gain, and lamp life, two people using the same projector may see images with very different peak brightness levels. For the same HDR TV, the peak brightness is the same. Therefore, the projector must process more HDR content, so the HDR quality of different projectors differs more than the quality of the SDR signal.
We also measured each projector to see how much DCI/P3 color gamut it can reproduce. For all the projectors we tested, the extended color gamut displayed reduced brightness, so even if the projector supports it, you may not want to enable a wider color gamut.
Finally, the projector needs at least HDMI 2.0b input to accept 4K signals with HDR. There are two versions of HDMI 2.0b: 10.2 Gbps and 18.0 Gbps. Most HDR content displays normally at 10.2 Gbps, but some content cannot be displayed at full resolution or the best refresh rate unless you have an 18.0 Gbps connection. Therefore, in order to ensure the best quality of the projectors we tested, we seek the support of 18.0 Gbps. The latest HDMI 2.1 specification supports higher bandwidth, but now this is more important for games than movies, so it is less important for home theater projectors.
I set up all the projectors in my home theater room using a 92-inch diagonal Stewart StudioTek 100 screen with 1.0 gain. I measured all of this with CalMAN 2018 software, i1Pro2 spectrometer and SpectraCal C6 HDR colorimeter, used the test mode from Murideo Six-G to find the most accurate picture mode and adjusted it so that the HDR content gets accurate tone mapping as much as possible. We provide HDR content to the projector from Panasonic UB820 4K Blu-ray player and streaming content from Roku Premiere or Amazon Fire TV. We input standard Blu-ray content from another Panasonic UB820 player, which allows us to directly compare 4K and Blu-ray content on different inputs of the projector. We also use the Monoprice HDMI splitter to feed the same signal to multiple projectors at once, and compare them back-to-back by blocking the output of one of them and then switching.
Of all the projectors we tested, JVC DLA-NX5 produced the best overall image.
JVC DLA-NX5 is the best 4K projector, you don’t need to spend the equivalent of buying a small car to get it. Of all the projectors we tested, it had the highest contrast ratio (a staggering 21,494:1) and the brightest highlights, and it almost completely covered the wider DCI color gamut-so it produced the best HDR images. JVC uses a real 4K D-ILA panel, so NX5 can display every pixel in 4K movies and games. The automatic lens makes setup easy, and the projector provides you with accurate images out of the box. In our test, this projector was the closest to replicating our reference OLED TV viewing experience on the projection screen, but it was the largest and heaviest projector we tested.
JVC was the last projector I tested for our latest update, but it only took a minute to realize that the image is impressive compared to the competition. JVC’s projectors use the company’s proprietary D-ILA technology, which is a liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) version that produces the darkest screen blacks of all the projectors we’ve tested. Although the peak brightness of the DLA-NX5 may be similar to other models we have seen, its ability to display deeper blacks makes the image look much better in our tests. Bright highlights emerge against a black background; on other projectors, the same highlights appear darker against a dark gray background. I can see the details in the night scene that I can't see on other projectors. The letterbox bars that were dark gray on other projectors seemed to disappear into the darkness on JVC.
Most importantly, the better black level of DLA-NX5 improves the quality of HDR and SDR content. Even if you are not watching a single 4K program on this JVC projector, it can still produce better-looking images than the competition. In the next few years, the amount of 4K content will grow and replace HD, just like HD did for SD, but DLA-NX5 makes your HD content look as good as possible now.
The excellent black level of NX5 comes from the combination of its D-ILA chip and the projector's dynamic aperture. The dynamic aperture automatically reduces the amount of light JVC generates for dark scenes, which makes my usual torture test of the hilltop scene in the final Harry Potter movie a breeze. The other projectors we tested also included dynamic iris, but the iris either reacted too slowly, causing the light output to change in an unnatural way, or it was too noisy during use, so you can hear it adjusting when you try to watch a movie.
DLA-NX5 can handle HDR content better than most 4K projectors. It provides automatic tone mapping, and when enabled, it does an excellent job of preserving highlight details as well as color saturation and overall brightness. Where other projectors make the sun in Pan look faded, JVC presents an accurate blend of vibrant yellow and orange. The projector also provides more HDR tone mapping controls than the competition, allowing you to customize the tone mapping according to the screen size and get the best overall image. The JVC manual even includes content-based recommended settings to provide you with a good starting point.
Compared with other projectors we tested, DLA-NX5 also showed richer and more realistic red, green, and blue (and all colors in between) tones. It shows most of the DCI/P3 color gamut currently used for 4K content. It is also ready for future content because it can manage a large number of Rec.2020 color spaces: 76.6%, which ranks second in our test. (The leader is 78.2%, and some only cover 54%.) This means that DLA-NX5 can show you more colors in 4K content. However, displaying these colors will reduce the brightness of the projector. On my 92-inch screen, this is not a problem, but if you have a larger screen, you may need to sacrifice these extra colors to increase brightness.
DLA-NX5 has a pair of HDMI 2.0 inputs that support a full 18.0 Gbps bandwidth. Many other projectors have only one HDMI 2.0 input or do not allow the full 18.0 Gbps bandwidth, which makes them incompatible with some HDR content today and in the future. Although most people may only use one HDMI input with a projector (let their receiver do input switching), it is better to have a pair of HDMI 2.0 inputs, especially if one input has a problem. Since the refresh rate of JVC cannot exceed 60 Hz, there is no need for the ability to receive 120 Hz signals through HDMI 2.1. If you want to use JVC as a game projector, you must manually select the game mode because it does not support automatic low-latency mode (but it is not really designed for games).
The motorized lens makes the setup of JVC relatively easy. You can control the focal length, lens shift (horizontal/-34% and vertical/-80%) and zoom (2.0x) through the remote control without having to touch the dials or buttons of the device itself. You can also stand in front of the screen and make adjustments so that you can focus more easily without the need for others to help you. If your screen shape is not 16:9, such as a 2.40:1 CinemaScope screen, the projector can provide you with the option to save multiple lens memories, so you can easily install multiple aspect ratios on the screen without Always redo the lens settings.
Out of the box, the image of the DLA-NX5 looks very accurate, and the projector includes options to adjust the output according to the screen. You can refer to a list of about 100 popular screen materials and enter the corresponding numbers to automatically apply adjustments. Since each screen has its own color attributes, this function allows you to easily obtain more accurate images without the need for professional calibration. But you can still get the most accurate results by professionally calibrating the projector. (We usually don't recommend going that far with the TV, but calibration is more useful for projectors.)
If your projector is calibrated, JVC DLA-NX5 provides the widest range of calibration control options of all the projectors we have tested. You can calibrate for HDR and SDR with great flexibility to ensure that it is suitable for your room and environment. Every projector we tested provided basic calibration control, but JVC DLA-NX5 did a better job in this regard.
Although DLA-NX5's automatic tone mapping helps make HDR look better than the competition, HDR is still a problem with projectors. JVC relies on metadata in HDR content to generate the most accurate images, but not all HDR content contains metadata. When we paired JVC with Panasonic DP-UB820 (the upgrade option in our guide to the best 4K Blu-ray players), we got the best images from JVC. Before sending HDR content to JVC, Panasonic can apply custom tone mapping to HDR content (which will include metadata), making it easier for JVC to display the content correctly. Every projector we tested benefited from Panasonic's tone mapping function, but JVC did the best when dealing with HDR content without it.
This projector is very big. The previous JVC model was already huge, and the DLA-NX5 was definitely huge, weighing 43 pounds. Most ceiling projector brackets cannot support it. When I went to buy a projector stand for my new theater room, I deliberately looked for a model that can install the old JVC projector, and it works fine here. If you already have a mount, some companies will sell custom JVC brackets that connect to ordinary threaded pipes, but be sure to check the weight and size limits of the existing mount.
The motion processing of DLA-NX5 is most suitable for movies and TV shows, while some other projectors provide better performance in sports and video games. JVC measured an input delay of 45 milliseconds in game mode, which should be no problem for most gamers, but the response speed of the D-ILA panel is not as fast as DLP, so the image has a bit of motion blur. I'm still happy to play video games on JVC, but the Sony VPL-VW295ES has lower input delay and slightly less motion blur.
If you want to watch 3D through DLA-NX5, you need to purchase and connect an optional 3D transmitter; other projectors have built-in transmitters. You also need to buy 3D glasses.
Home Cinema 5050UB supports HDR and wide color gamut technology, but it cannot match the detail or contrast of the best 4K projectors.
*At the time of publication, the price was US$3,000.
If you want a projector that can take advantage of 4K HDR content, but don't want to spend a lot of effort to get the best contrast or true 4K resolution, then Epson Home Cinema 5050UB is your best choice. This Epson model is not a true 4K projector: it uses a 1080p panel with optical shift to display additional resolution, so it is not as detailed as the JVC DLA-NX5 in terms of true 4K content. Due to its low contrast ratio of 4,400:1, it also cannot display HDR content, but it can display additional details in HDR highlights. Its color gamut coverage is almost the same as DLA-NX5, and it has fully automatic lens control and flexible setting options.
The 1080p content of the 5050UB looks very good. It does support a wider color gamut, but enabling this feature will cause the light output to drop from 236 nits to 105 nits in our tests. The difference is obvious. We prefer the HDR appearance with brighter highlights without expanding the color gamut coverage. In contrast, even with a wide color gamut, JVC is brighter. The 5050UB also provides tone mapping control for HDR to help customize the amount of highlight detail and brightness to match your screen, but at a different level than JVC.
The 5050UB is easy to set up, with fully automatic lens control (supports screen aspect ratios other than 16:9, no letterbox), 2.1x zoom and a lot of lens shift (/- 96.3% vertical shift and /- 47.1% horizontal shift).
One of the annoyances of Epson 5050UB is that the projector does not automatically detect the signal type and change to the correct image mode. I set the projector to look best in natural mode for SDR content and Bright Cinema mode for HDR, but I have to remember to change it from one mode to another.
JVC announced new 4K projectors, which will begin shipping at the end of 2021 and are one of the first projectors to support HDMI 2.1. JVC DLA-NZ7, DLA-NZ8 and DLA-NZ9 use a laser engine to provide 20,000 hours of service life, higher contrast and higher light output than before. These projectors can display content at 4K 120 Hz, allowing them to fully handle the latest game consoles and PCs. They all have native 4K resolution and have 8K e-Shift to provide an upgrade to 8K resolution. But JVC has also increased the price of its projector series: the cheapest model DLA-NZ7 is now $10,000, while the flagship DLA-NZ9 is $25,000. Therefore, we are not sure whether to test these, because their prices are significantly higher than the previous generation, which includes our current top picks.
The Sony VPL-VW325ES replaced the VPL-VW295ES we tested in the past and increased the price to $5,500. Sony added an X1 processor to this projector, and we like the performance of this processor in company TVs. VW325ES claims a light output of 1,500 lumens, which is 300 lumens lower than JVC DLA-NX5, and Sony lacks the dynamic aperture provided by JVC. But we still plan to test it.
LG has released the US$4,000 AU810PB and US$3,000 HU810PW 4K projectors, which use DLP light engines and dual lasers (red and blue), which allows them to cover almost the entire DCI color gamut while still having a claimed 2,700 lumens Brightness and 20,000 hours of life. The HDMI input also supports HDMI 2.1 features, such as automatic low-latency mode and eARC, but does not support higher refresh rates from game consoles. The integrated AirPlay and Miracast also allow you to send video content directly from your smartphone. AU810PB is specially designed for the custom installation market, using black instead of white, and provides Calman calibration integration and IP control, but other models are almost the same. We plan to test HU810PW soon.
Optoma's new UHZ50 is a 4K HDR DLP projector that uses a laser light source to produce a claimed 3,000 ANSI lumen brightness. Setting functions include 1.3x zoom and vertical lens shift. It has three HDMI ports (including one that supports eARC but is not the official HDMI 2.1) and two USB ports, as well as 240 Hz refresh rate and low input latency for gaming. It seems to be more aimed at brighter spaces and games, but we still plan to check it out.
XGIMI Horizon Pro 4K is a 4K DLP projector with a smaller form factor and easy to move, but it does not have a dedicated HDR viewing mode, has limited setting tools, and has poor contrast compared to our choice. It is more suitable for a living room than a dedicated theater room.
Viewsonic x100-4K also uses a DLP engine with LEDs to provide 4K resolution, but there are issues with colors and medium black levels in HDR content. It integrates streaming media applications, so you can easily access content, and integrated speakers, which makes it more suitable for living room than home theater-but it is not as bright as our choice of living room.
Sony introduced the updated VPL-VW715ES and VPL-VW915ES projectors at CEDIA 2020. 715ES is a native 4K projector with a standard lamp, and 915ES is a native 4K projector with a laser light source. They provide improved HDR performance, but they are priced at US$10,000 and US$20,000, respectively, which exceed the models we would consider.
Sony VPL-VW295ES provides full 4K resolution, motorized lens and very good SDR image quality. It does not provide the dynamic aperture or wider color gamut support provided by JVC DLA-NX5, and you cannot fine-tune the HDR presentation to the same extent. To get a dynamic aperture (and thus better contrast), you need to purchase the VPL-VW695ES for $10,000. Of all the 4K projectors we tested for this update, the 295ES does have the lowest input latency, 36 milliseconds in game mode, and the motion quality is very suitable for sports and video games. But JVC looks better overall, using both SDR and HDR materials.
BenQ HT5550 uses DLP chipset to display all pixels in 4K signal and provides wide color gamut support. It has a dynamic aperture, but it responds slowly and is very noisy when used. The image is very clear, but the black level is not as good as I have seen from LCD and LCoS projectors, so HDR lacks a sense of popularity, and the tone mapping of HDR content often makes the highlights look faded. In addition, there is no game mode, resulting in a 60 millisecond input delay.
The BenQ HT3550 also has a DLP chipset, but you cannot adjust the lens position like the HT5550, and the lens is not as sharp. Compared with other projectors, HDR often looks faded and the colors are not so accurate. There is no game mode, so the delay time is about 60 milliseconds.
Epson Home Cinema 4010 is similar to 5050UB, but with lower contrast, it is more suitable for rooms with ambient light. Since the impact of ambient light on the appearance of HDR is much greater than that on SDR, we focus on projectors in a dedicated home theater room environment. In this environment, 5050UB is obviously better and worth the extra price.
The discontinued Optoma UHD60 uses a different DLP chipset from the BenQ HT2550, which is better at parsing single-pixel details, but it also has the same problem-no wide color gamut support and medium-level HDR performance. It produces very large, bright, and detailed images, but it does not show the best results for 4K content. If you only care about the details, this model is worth a look, but other projectors offer excellent 1080p or 4K images at similar prices. The newer UHD50X and UHD38 are brighter 4K projectors that are more suitable for use in games and living rooms, rather than watching movies in a home theater.
Optoma UHZ65 uses a laser light source, but it lacks support for a wide color gamut and does not have a motorized lens. At $4,000, this is not the model we are interested in-but if you absolutely don't want to buy a replacement bulb after 5,000 hours, this is an option.
The JVC DLA-RS4500 is a true 4K projector that uses a laser fluorescent light source and the company's D-ILA panel, but its $35,000 list price prevents us from considering it in this guide.
Chris Heinonen (Chris Heinonen) is a senior writer. He reports on TVs, projectors, and sometimes audio equipment at Wirecutter. Since 2008, he has been covering AV for many online publications and is an ISF certified video calibrator. He once wrote computer software and hopes not to do it again in the future. He also likes to run and test the equipment of the running guide.
Authors: Adrienne Maxwell and Chris Heinonen
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