Avoid these 7 common PROJECTOR buying mistakes

today on the hookup i'm going to show you seven of the biggest mistakes that people make when buying and using projectors and how to avoid them to save money and get the right projector for your needs in the last few years huge improvements have been made in projector technology to not only make them more affordable but also easier and more convenient to own but shopping for a projector is still an overwhelming nightmare because there are so many different types of projectors and so many different options in this video i'm going to cover seven of the biggest projector selection pitfalls and how you can avoid them the first mistake is misunderstanding advertised brightness every single projector is going to perform best when viewed in a completely dark room but the more light you have in the room the more brightness your projector will need to avoid looking washed out unfortunately even though there is an agreed upon standard for measuring projector brightness called antsy lumens many dishonest companies choose to represent their brightness in different units to make them sound much better than they are as i said antilumens are the standard measurement for projector brightness and they're calculated by projecting an all-white screen and then measuring the brightness at nine different areas then you average those measurements and multiply them by the screen size in square meters but instead of anti-lumens most cheap led projectors on amazon instead list their light source lumens which just tells you how bright the led chip inside the projector is and not the actual projected image there's no perfect way to convert between light source lumens and ansi lumens but as an example this projector which is my current recommendation in the sub 100 category claims to have 6500 lumens on the product page but it actually has around 96 antsy lumens and it's not just off-brand projectors that are trying to trick you even samsung lists the brightness of their 900 freestyle projector at 550 lumens but you'll notice that you don't see the word ansi next to that measurement and that's because it actually represents something called led lumens which can thankfully be converted to ansi lumens by dividing by 2.4 meaning the freestyle should have around 230 ansi lumens and in testing it comes out slightly higher than that at 240 ansi lumens but close enough there's no hard and fast rule for how much brightness is needed for different amounts of ambient light and remember that all projectors are going to look best in a dark room but these are my general recommendations for ansi lumens required to get a usable 100 inch screen in different lighting conditions projecting outside during the day but not in direct sunlight you'll want at least 3 500 ansi lumens for a usable image inside during the day with the blinds open and lights on you should look for over 2500 antsy lumens if you close the blinds and turn most of the lights off you can get by with around 600 nancy lumens and projectors 300 nancy lumens and below will work best only at night and only in dark conditions the second most common mistake that i see is buying the wrong projector type for your planned use and location this might sound obvious but if you're planning on making a dedicated home theater or replacing your tv with a projector then you probably shouldn't buy a portable projector because they generally cost more for less performance and this makes sense because not only is it more expensive to include a battery inside a projector but it also means that that projector has to conserve power to make the battery last longer and that all the parts including the light source and dlp chip need to be miniaturized to fit into a portable case if you are looking for a portable projector then one of my favorites is the xg me halo plus which costs 849 dollars and gets you a 1080p projector with 665 ansi lumens solid battery life auto focus and keystone and android tv 10. but if you're not planning on moving your projector around then a similarly priced non-portable projector like the optima gt 1080 hdr will get you over 5 times the brightness for the exact same price although they do have different light source technologies and that leads me into mistake number three which is choosing the right light source tech one thing that every projector needs is a bright light and projectors have three different ways of creating that light first there are high intensity discharge bulbs commonly just called bulb projectors second led projectors use a bright array of white leds or three separate color leds and third the newest technology uses either a single laser or three separate color lasers for an ultra bright long lasting light source there are some subtle differences in the images created by these three projection types but overall the biggest difference is the trade-off between brightness cost and lifespan bulb projectors are the least expensive way to achieve high brightness but the bulbs will typically need to be replaced every three to five thousand watch hours another disadvantage of a ball projector is that they typically consume more energy and get hotter than led and laser projectors if you're just planning on using your projector to watch an occasional movie then a ball projector might make sense because it's going to take you years to rack up enough usage to need to change the bulb but if you plan on replacing your tv with a projector then you should probably focus on one of the two other light sources led projectors consume less energy have a lamp life up to 10 times longer than bulb projectors and are generally cheaper to produce but they typically don't offer the same brightness as a ball projector in the same price point recently there have been some exceptions to this rule like the benq x3000i which consumes a massive 330 watts of power to pump out 3 000 ansi lumens from its four led light sources but it's pretty much the exception to the rule last are laser projectors which are the newest technology in projector light sources laser offers the best of almost all worlds giving you high brightness lower energy consumption lower heat production and high lifespan at the expense of well expense laser projectors tend to be the most expensive option and are rarely available for less than two thousand dollars but the highly collimated light is also useful for advanced optics like ultra short throw lenses and that leads me to mistake number four which is not planning where your projector will need to be mounted to get the screen size that you want there are three general categories of projectors based on something called throw ratio there's standard throw short throw and ultra short throw standard throw projectors generally have throw ratios between 1.0 and 1.5 which would mean if your projector had a throw ratio of 1.5 that in order to project a 100 inch wide screen the projector would need to sit 100 times 1.5 or 150 inches away from the screen this could cause a problem if you're in a small room or are limited in where you can place your projector so you might need a short throw projector which would generally have a throw ratio between .5 and .7 meaning you could get a 100 inch screen placing the projector as close as 50 inches away the last throw ratio category is called ultra short throw or ust and it allows you to place your projector directly under the screen to project a 100 inch image with the lens only around 20 to 25 inches away from the screen ultra short throws have recently gained a lot of popularity because it's not only easier to set up your projector on a piece of furniture under the screen than it is to hang it from the ceiling but that also puts the built-in speakers in front of you instead of behind you and it lets you use a special type of screen called the optical ambient light rejecting screen which reflects light that comes from low angles and rejects light sources that come from above and that leads me to mistake number five which is spending your entire budget on a projector and forgetting about the screen like all displays a projector's image is made of light wherever the image should be all white the projector will send out full brightness red green and blue light which our eyes are going to perceive as white and wherever the image should be black the projector will attempt to block as much light as possible from passing through its lcd screen or dlp chip but for a projector this means that the color of the surface that you're projecting on will not only dictate the true color of the white parts of the image but it means that the ambient light in the room will affect how deep the blacks are in a bright room you'll notice that the black levels can never be completely black because of the ambient light to combat this projector screens have a statistic that's called screen gain which is how much light they'll absorb or reflect a screen with a gain of 1.0 would reflect 100 of the light that's shined on it and would be ideal for a purpose-built home theater room but in a bright room where not all the ambient light can be blocked out a projector screen with a gain value below 1.0 will block out some of that ambient light at the expense of also blocking some of your projector's brightness using some oversimplified math we can estimate that a 650 ansi lumen projector like the xg me halo plus projected onto a 0.8 gain screen would have a total perceived brightness of only about 520 lumens but the black levels on the screen would be improved by roughly 20 percent projector screens are available for all budgets but the least expensive being the spandex style screens that are meant for temporary usage but for permanent installations you can choose between different mounting options like fixed frame screens manual and motorized pull down screens and even motorized floor rising screens most of these mounting options are available with different screen styles with different gains and here's a quick demonstration of how a different screen material can affect the overall look of a projected image during the day with the blinds open this is the projected image during the day with the blinds closed and no lights on and finally this is what it looks like at night with as little ambient light as possible in my living room you can see that the best black levels and contrast come from the optical ambient light rejecting screen made specifically for ultra short throw projectors but in all conditions the brightest screen is the pure white option so if you're looking for a more high contrast hdr experience a gray low gain screen paired with a high brightness projector is best but if you just want as much brightness as possible then a white screen with a gain between 1.0 and 1.3 is the best way to go mistake number six is getting too fixated on your projector's resolution if you're looking at a specific price point and have the option between a 1080p projector and a 4k projector it's entirely possible that the 1080p projector will produce a clearer and more crisp looking image from normal viewing distance than a 4k projector this is because our eyes perceive clarity not only as a function of pixel density but also of brightness and contrast ratio there's also some confusion about the term native resolution some cheap led projectors on amazon might claim to be 4k projectors when in fact they only have a native 1080p lcd screen in this case claiming to be a 4k projector is just an outright lie and what they actually mean is that they can play a 4k source by automatically downscaling the video to 1080p so the screen can display it however there are projectors that can use a 1080p dlp chip to output a true 4k image this technique is called pixel shifting and basically instead of drawing one 1080p image with 2 million pixels per frame the dlp chip can rapidly shift and draw four different 1080p images slightly offset from one another to make a total of 8 million pixels per frame and we call that pixel shifted 4k some might argue that a projector with an actual 4k screen is higher quality than a 1080p pixel shifted screen but in practice it's practically impossible to tell the difference between pixel shifted and native resolution so instead of focusing purely on resolution when choosing a projector for your specific budget you should prioritize brightness then contrast ratio then resolution as long as you're choosing between 1080p and 4k i wouldn't recommend spending anything over 100 on a projector with a 720p resolution last mistake number seven is getting too hung up on a projector's smart functionality very rarely should you make your projector selection based on an operating system like android tv web os or tizen os it's surprisingly common for these native operating systems to have limitations with specific apps like netflix to not be able to output dolby atmos surround sound and generally they're just pretty slow and clunky but for 34 dollars you can get an amazon fire stick 4k 49 gets you a full featured google tv with chromecast and if you want to go all in 200 will get you the nvidia shield which is generally regarded as the best streaming media platform ever made point is there are a lot more important things to worry about when selecting your projector and a smart os probably shouldn't be one of them as long as your projector's interface is advanced enough to offer things like keystoning and image correction options then you shouldn't worry too much about what apps may or may not be compatible with it if you are looking for a purely portable projector then i can see how carrying around another remote or dongle might not be ideal but for a permanent or even semi-permanent setup it definitely doesn't matter and you're much better off with a purpose-built streaming device that you can replace in a few years when something better comes along so what do you think did i miss a mistake that you made let me know down in the comments if you're still completely confused as to which projector you should get i linked a few of my favorites at different price categories down in the description and i've also got a playlist of projector showdown videos that i made to help you pick out the one that's right for you as always thank you so much to my awesome patrons over at patreon for your continued support on my channel and if you're interested in supporting my channel please check out the links down in the description if you enjoyed this video please hit the thumbs up button and consider subscribing and as always thanks for watching the hookup you

Channel: The Hook Up

Views: 520,737

Keywords: Common Projector Fails, led vs laser projectors, short throw vs ust, ultra short throw projectors, home theater how to, best projector, inexpensive projector, home theater projectors, projector screens, home theater setup, outdoor projector, outdoor home theater, backyard projector, backyard theater, projector mistakes, home theater mistakes, projector brightness, screen gain, screen gain projector, screen gain explained, backyard theater ideas, diy home theater

Id: Ac8kW226oCM

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 03 2022