6 Questions You Need to Answer Before Purchasing a Projector

Everyone dreams of having a home theatre with big screen. It allows the whole family to snuggle up on the sofa and enjoy a movie. Nowadays, projectors aren’t prohibitively expensive and you don’t need a large space either. There are more and more small households with people living alone but getting projectors.

However, you shouldn’t only look at the price, features or performance when choosing a projector. You should consider what you need to find the projector that best suits you. The problem is there are hundreds of projectors on the market, each of which says the same thing: they have the most functions, the best resolution, Full HD, 4K, HDR, a high price-performance ratio, wireless projection, portable projection, etc. It seems like every single one does everything you need. How do you decide?
In fact, you can quickly find which projector you need by answering the following 6 questions.

In general, projectors can be divided into commercial projectors and home projectors. Commercial projectors are mostly used in offices, conference rooms, or conference centers. These are not typically used in dark rooms, and participants are mainly watching presentations. From a design perspective, commercial projector should be bright enough to make text clear so that people can see the contents of your briefing. The unit used to measure brightness of light is called a lumen. Basically, commercial projectors for small and medium-sized conference rooms are about 3,000 to 3,500 lumens. A projector may need 6,000 to 8,000 lumens to cover a large conference center for one or two hundred people, or 10,000 lumens for a large screen at an outdoor performance.

As for a home theater projector, it should be selected based on your needs. For example, if you want to go camping, you should choose a portable projector. If you like watching in a dark room, you can choose a projector with authentic color accuracy. There are high brightness projectors for environments with ambient light, and projectors with low input lag are great for playing video games.

True colors evoke feelings of sorrow, joy, romance and thrills by preserving the original image. In order to present the original film colors that creators imagined for you, our exclusive CinematicColor™ technology, corrected by BenQ's THX and ISF dual-certified engineers, delivers perfect color consistency and reproduces the original image from directors. You won’t lose shadow details either, so viewers can enjoy the movie as it was intended!

In an effectively shaded room, the projector can perform at its best. However, most places are not completely dark. In the living room of the average consumer, there will always be some faint light from windows. So a higher lumen projector, around 3000 lumens, works best.

Yet, if the quality of movies is a big concern for you, and you happen have a space that can be made dark for viewing, then you should choose a projector with higher resolution, color and grayscale performance. BenQ's home projectors provide the most accurate color, a wide range of the color gamut, all with reduced lamp energy consumption and an extended lamp life.

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In a large space such as a conference room or living room, there is plenty of room to project. So you can place the projector far enough from the screen to enlarge it, although you still need to pay attention to the zoom distance. If you get too far out, and the focal length is too short. You could easily distort the picture to be too large. The quality will suffer as well.

As for a small suite or bedroom, perhaps just 10 feet by 10 feet, since you’ve a narrower space, the projection distance becomes more important. It is better to buy a short-throw projector. We recommend BenQ short-throw projectors. From just 2.5m (8’ 2.5”) away, you can project a 100” screen, which is perfect for making the most out of small spaces.

In fact, in most small rooms, a screen just 60” to 80” large creates a completely immersive experience. Compared to 60” televisions on the market, projectors offer more affordable, portable, and flexible zoom or display sizes. Also, it clearly has the better price-performance ratio.

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In order to install a home theater you normally need a lot of cables. Anyone who wants surround sound needs a slew. So before your interior decorators start rearranging things, you should discuss cabling and may need to invite plumbers and electricians as well as installation technicians. With the help of audio professionals you can get the best results. Furthermore, they can help you avoid poor quality projection caused by poor communication. Who wants to tear it all out and start all over again?

However, if you do not want to redecorate too much, it’s better to select a projector with zoom and lens shift functions to preserve the best image quality. Alternatively, you could use a short-throw projector from a nearby table or use a side projection function and place it at an angle. You can enjoy the ultimate audio and video feast at home without redesigning a room.

In fact, every projector is suitable for gaming. It’s just a matter of what type of games you like to play.

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If your budget range is US$1,000-1,500, you can choose Home Entertainment series projectors. All you need is a white or gray wall and you can immediately have a home theatre in a small 10’x10’ room. For another US$300-700, you can get a 5.1-channel Soundbar front-mounted speaker, to complete the theater experience.

For budget ranges of US$1,500-3,000, we recommend our CineHome and CinePrime series projectors. It’s ideal for family theaters! The projector comes with a finely textured high-quality curtain, so you could enjoy a cinema-like visual experience.

If you prefer the highest quality visual enjoyment, you should budget US$3,000 or more. At this level, we recommend you seek out professional audio-visual system designers to help sketch out your floor plan to install the BenQ CinePro series projectors with multi-channel audio -- a main speaker, a center speaker, a subwoofer, even satellite speakers around the perimeter. You can choose a high end screen that’s flat with color temperature accuracy. Raise and lower the screen with a remote control. By the time you’re done, your home theater may be better than a movie theater!

Consider that a movie ticket goes for around US$10. If you buy 2 tickets at a time, and go to theatres once every 2 weeks, it would cost you US$1,000 and you would have only watched 50 movies. That means that as long as you intend to see more than 50 movies, a projector is a more economical choice.