SHARP, BRIGHT, & BUDGET-FRIENDLY

IN JUST a few short years the home projector landscape has undergone a radical revolution in terms of price and selection.

- Mark Henninger

There's the proliferation of UST (ultra-short-throw) DLP projectors with laser light sources over the past few years. Even more recently, a new breed of compact and powerful "lifestyle" standard-throw models has emerged. These projectors produce bright and sharp images, often with a level of video fidelity previously unimaginable at their price point.

Meanwhile, the dedicated home theater projectors from industry stalwarts like Epson, JVC, and Sony have transitioned to laser light sources.

A key point to emphasize is that this buyer's guide is based directly on my hands-on experience with all the included models. It is not a list that's just based on specs. Also for the purpose of this roundup we're staying away from five-figure price tags (or higher). Otherwise, we'd simply suggest you go buy a Christie Eclipse and be done with it!

Dedicated Home Theaters versus Living Areas

A 4K dedicated home theater projector typically starts at around $5,000 and can run into the six figures for high-end installations.

These projectors are generally much larger than the lifestyle models and do not usually offer more brightness than the other projectors featured in this list.

Instead, they focus on delivering superior contrast, a feature best leveraged in a completely light-controlled environment such as a dedicated home theater with dark walls and ceiling. Home theater projectors often include sophisticated optics with powered focus, zoom, and lens shift capabilities.

These heavy-hitters also typically have sophisticated processing for dealing with HDR, JVC consistently earns plaudits for how well its projectors handle the crucial task of tone-mapping content mastered at 1,000 nits for a setup that might be topping out at 100 or 150 nits. It costs a lot to buy a third-party video processor such as a MadVR that can match what JVC does right out of the box.