![]() The Truth: There are no single best home theater projectors or home entertainment projectors – at any particular price point. I will at least try to always point out, for example, that “why this projector beat out that one for such-and-such award was the great black levels, vs, lower price, or quieter operation” where applicable. I recall years ago, Evan Powell (of Projector Central fame) and I often disagreed on how much to weight better black level performance. To me, achieving excellent black levels, for example, is more important than a small improvement in sharpness. There are plenty of under $2000 projectors that do a great job on bright and average lit scenes, as good as many significantly more expensive projectors, but the differences on very dark scenes are technically not the difference between “night and day” but can be extremely dramatic. Another reviewer might not give as much weight to black level performance, instead having biases for extra brightness, or color accuracy, or sharpness, etc. To me, when you put a projector in your cave or home theater and get to a really dark scene in a movie, that’s what separates a great projector from a good one. Consider one bias that I will now remind you of, in these awards – I’m big on black level performance in home theater projectors (although not near as concerned about black levels with “home entertainment projectors” – none of which really have good black levels anyway). Bias isn’t a bad thing, it’s just one more piece of information, if you know what the biases are. My picks are subjective, and they reflect my well-known biases, or, if you prefer – my priorities. Lots of trade-offs is what makes good reviews subjective. One of my favorite lines has long been: “If they did everything well, they wouldn’t be ‘entry-level,’ would they?” Some things, these projectors can do rather well, and other things, poorly. I do consider the street pricing, if significantly lower, in making decisions relating to awards, but, even if that won’t affect what price Class the projector is placed in. In other words, in the $1000 to $2000 class, the fact that one projector sells for $1200 and another for $1900 will affect our rankings, as it should! But, if the list price is $1999 and a few dealers are at $1799 – that would have little impact.Įntry Level Projector Compromises: To state the obvious, the projectors in the Entry Level Class – Under $1000 – are loaded with trade-offs, (that’s even true for most more expensive ones, but especially true for these entry-level/near-entry-level models). There’s always some low baller, and sometimes they offer gray market goods, and therefore not full US warranties, so I prefer not to let those folks distort the normal selling price for purposes of our evaluating value. Also, when we speak of “street price,” we are referring to the typical price when the projector is sold by authorized dealers. Note: Our classes are organized by List Price (or, in more than a few cases, what the manufacturer sells that projector for on their own site – when their on-site price is below list price). Otherwise, the HT5550 would have ended up in the $1000 – $2499 Class, and therefore not “doing battle” with the projector I consider its single most direct competitor. ![]() In the $2K to $5K range, that means that the more expensive BenQ HT5550 (with a $2499 list price and better black levels) gets to go up against the Epson HC5050UB – basically the same projector, feature-wise, as the HC4010, but with much better black level performance. So, for example, there’s the really nice BenQ HT3550 (4K UHD) doing battle with a more feature-laden Epson HC4010, which are two highly competitive projectors – but neither have really impressive black level performance. Whether they are 4K UHD DLPs or 1080p pixel shifting 3LCD projectors, they tend to all lack the great black level performance found in many more expensive projectors. This year, I point out that most of the projectors in the $1000 – $2000 range that we reviewed in the past 12 months, are 4K capable. I thought I would take a paragraph to explain exactly why we have $1000 – $2000 this year, instead of $1000 – $2500 last year. This year, we are putting all over $5000 projectors into a single price class. The next Class tier for our Home Theater Projectors Report are $2500 – $5000. Now, we have that Entry Level Class called “Under $1000.” Next up this year is the $1000 – $2000 Class, whereas the 2018 Report had a $1000 – $2500 class. Because of changes in the market – especially lower prices in general – we started an Under $1000 Class for Entry Level. For example, a few years back, our “Entry Level” Class was defined as projectors under $2000. We adapt our price “classes” regularly, changing the price points for the classes to group projectors in an intelligent fashion.
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