Home Theater Projector Buying Guide: What Features Matter Most When Upgrading?

When upgrading to a home theater projector, the features that matter most are color accuracy, HDR performance, and 4K resolution, followed by brightness that fits your room, strong contrast, and the connections your gear needs. Projectors can look similar on a spec sheet, but these six features decide how close your picture gets to what the filmmaker intended. Here is what to look for in each, in order of impact.

Color accuracy decides whether skin tones, skies, and shadows on your screen match what the filmmaker and colorist intended. Two specs tell you most of what you need to know.

DCI-P3 coverage. DCI-P3 is the color space used for theatrical and HDR movie masters. The more of it a projector covers, the more of the original color it can reproduce.

Delta E. This measures how far a displayed color is from the intended color. A Delta E under 2 is generally hard for the eye to notice, so colors look true to the source.

Also look for accuracy out of the box. Most people never calibrate a projector, so the picture you see on day one should already be right.

Others

BenQ Rec.709. Rec. 709 is the standard for HD TV, Blu-ray, and streaming, so a good home theater projector should cover it too. Color is subjective, which is why these standards exist: they make sure what looks red to you looks red to everyone.

BenQ’s home cinema projectors use CinematicColor technology to cover these standards. The W4100i, W5850, and W5800 deliver 100% DCI-P3 with Delta E<2, and the W2720i delivers 90% DCI-P3 and 98% Rec.709 with Delta E<3.

Read more: Unsure About Projection Colors, Color Gamut, or Color Wheel?

HDR widens the range between the darkest and brightest parts of a picture, which is what makes explosions glow and night scenes keep their detail. Projectors work with less peak brightness than TVs, so how a projector handles HDR content matters as much as whether it supports it.

Look for tone mapping, which adjusts each scene, so highlights don’t blow out and shadows don’t crush. Dynamic tone mapping does this scene by scene, rather than applying one fixed setting to the whole movie. Contrast enhancement and good black level handling add to it.

BenQ HDR-PRO brings these together with optimal HDR tone mapping, global and local contrast enhancement, and dynamic black. All four of the W-Series projectors use HDR-PRO, and the W4100i and W5850 add Dynamic Tone Mapping.

Read more: What is BenQ HDR-PRO Technology?

The clarity of an image produced by a projector is referred to as resolution. A general screen image is made from tiny dots called pixels. The more pixels on a screen, the better the quality of the image is going to be. If your goal is to watch movies or play games, you need a resolution with a high number of pixels.

A good resolution for a home theater projector is 1920X1080, also known as Full HD & 4K UHD (3840X2160 or True 4K). A good quality home theater projector has these pixel specifications, which you’ll need to be able to enjoy HD movies or games. For reference, BenQ’s W2720i is a 4K UHD home theater projector with 8.3 million distinct pixels for each frame, four times the resolution of Full HD 1080p. A 4K projector resolution creates the clearest detailed images for anything you project.

You don’t necessarily have to purchase a screen, but investing in one can enhance the contrast and produce a better-quality image.

Full HD 1080P

4K UHD

Read more: What is true 4K and does it matter?

When selecting a projector, you need to take into consideration the environment in which it will be placed in and the ambient light in that environment. Are you looking to put your projector indoors or outdoors? Will it only be watched by a few people or many viewers? What size is the room the projector will be placed in?

Projectors are sensitive to light. When we refer to the light output and brightness a projector produces, we use brightness measured in ANSI Lumens. The brightness output is essential to how it is perceived by the audience and there’s a huge difference between putting a projector in a place where there’s a lot of ambient light, or a darkroom that doesn’t have ambient light.

For a home cinema projector in a dark location that can still display a clear image despite some ambient light, you’ll need a projector above 2000 lumens. For a projector in lighter environments, you’ll need a model that allows for more than 3,000 lumens. If you need ambient lighting when using the projector, then a model with higher lumens will produce better results. 

Read more: Why does brightness or lumens matter for projectors? How many lumens do you need?

Contrast perception is an effect produced by a series of single frames and can be measured two ways: Full On/Full Off (FOFO) and ANSI Contrast. FOFO is easy to manipulate and is commonly used in the industry, whereas ANSI produces more valid numbers, but is hardly used.

Full On/Full Off contrast measures the ratio between the brightness of a solid white pattern (Full On) and that of a solid black pattern (Full Off). A contrast ratio of 5,000:1 means that the meter reads the white pattern as being 5000 times brighter than the black pattern. 

ANSI uses a single checkerboard pattern (consisting of 16 rectangles, 8 white and 8 black). The brightness of both the black and white squares are measured and averaged, and the ratio between them is the ANSI contrast ratio.

Besides these ratios, you should consider the other important factors such as: how much ambient light is available where you place your projector? And what will you be projecting it on? 

What does this mean when you shop? Headline contrast ratios are easy to inflate and are measured differently from brand to brand, so don’t rely on one number. What you see also depends on your room and screen: a darker room and a quality screen improve perceived contrast with any projector. Features like HDR-PRO help preserve detail in both the bright and dark parts of a scene.

BenQ DLP Projector

Non-DLP Projector

For more information on FOFO and ANSI, read this article: The Myth of Contrast

Your projector needs to connect to your sources, so check the ports. Look for HDMI that supports 4K with HDR, so your streaming device, game console, and Blu-ray player can send full-quality signals. Also look for ARC or eARC, which lets you send audio from the projector to a soundbar or AV receiver through one HDMI cable, and built-in streaming (W4100i and W2720i include Android TV) if you’d rather skip an external box.

If you’re upgrading, a few things work differently from what you’re used to.

From a TV. Screen size is the biggest change. A projector can fill a wall at a size TVs can’t practically reach, which is where 4K resolution and accurate color pay off most. Room light matters more than it does with a TV, so check brightness and, if your room isn’t dark, look for ambient light correction.

From a lamp projector. Lamp projectors dim and shift in color as the lamp ages, and need lamp replacements. LED and laser light sources hold brightness and color more consistently over time without replacement, so your picture stays close to what it looked like on day one. 

Lamp vs. LED vs. Laser

From a basic projector. The biggest upgrades are usually color accuracy and HDR handling. These are what make dark scenes look rich instead of flat and colors look natural instead of oversaturated.

Room Size

Whether you live by yourself or with your family, the space you set your projector in is important for how you prefer your viewing experience, especially if you have a smaller space. If you’re looking to put your projector on a table or the ceiling, look for projectors that can adjust their image based on where it is located. Throw distance, lens shift functions, and sideways keystone correction all contribute to adjusting the image depending on the angle and location of the projector.

For help matching a projector to your room and screen size, see our guide to building a home theater.

Purpose:

Projectors come in all shapes, sizes, and prices, and they have different functions depending on which one you buy. You may have a family and want to enjoy quality time together enjoying movies, or maybe you’re into gaming and want to have your friends over to play multiplayer games together on the big screen. Whatever the reason, you should consider these six features when selecting a projector that suits your needs and requirements!