You’d think finding out what are the best projector under £1000 is easy, right? You just go on Amazon, search for “Best Projector under £1000” and that’s it. The thing is, you get 35,562 results (at the time of writing). Not cool.
So you need to start researching. Luckily, researching stuff to buy is what I love doing so I took the liberty of doing a little bit of research to find out what the best projector under £1000 is. This is not intended to be a complete projector buying guide by all means. If I am missing anything, feel free to let me know in the comments bellow.
If you don’t want to read the whole thing you can just use these buttons to skip to the each projectors that made it into the Best Projector under £1000 list:
Epson EH-TW5200
Optoma GT1080
Optoma HD36
InFocus IN8606HD
BenQ W1300
Optoma HD141X
Before deciding who the winner is, I needed to first understand what makes a good projector. And this isn’t the same thing for everyone. Some of us are price conscious whilst other could not care less about the cost as long as they get the best of the best. The “future me” will belong in the later category but for now, the price is still an important factor for me.
Projector Buying Guide
The most important things that you need to look out for when buying a projector are its Brightness, Contrast and Resolution. You might have to compromise on one of the points in but, this is “Best Projector under £1000” not “Best Projector in the world”. Do you really want to pay for features you’ll never use? Didn’t think so…
High brightness (measured in Lumens) is important when using your projector for presentations and generally in environments where there is a source of light. If you are planning on watching movies or playing games in complete darkness, then you should not have to buy a projector that boasts more than 3,000 Lumens as it might hurt your eyes. If you’re using your projector in fairly bright ambient light then you might want to go for 3500 ANSI lumens or higher.
When deciding how bright the monitor should be, you should also take into consideration the screen size. The bigger the screen, the brighter the projector will have to be. If your screen size exceeds 70in, you will need a brighter monitor. This Projector Brightness advice calculator here should help: http://www.projectorpoint.co.uk/Projector-Brightness-Advice.htm
Contrast Ratio in this context is the ratio of the light reflected from an all-white image and an all black image and it is important because the higher the-the contract ratio number is, the clearer (more details) the image will be on your screen. So high contrast means high quality.
Resolution is the number of pixels that projectors can transmit. The four main resolutions are XGA (4:3 Aspect Ratio, 1024×768), WXGA (16:10 Aspect Ratio, 1280×800), High Definition (16:9 Aspect Ratio, 1920×1080) and 4K Ultra HD (4096×2160). I will not focus on the 4k projectors in this post since none of them made it onto our Best Projector under £1000 List. If you are wondering what Aspect Ratio means, it is basically the image shape the projector illuminates. People looking for a home entertainment machine should definitely go for the High Definition as its Aspect Ratio is the only one that supports playing movies and games on a full screen. To illustrate my point have a look at the picture attached underneath.
LCD vs DLP. These are the two main types of projectors out there at the moment. DLP offers a better picture quality and deeper colours but produces the so-called Rainbow effect. That occurs when very bright areas of the video move across very dark areas and causes some people to see flashes of red, green and blue. This happens due to the projector’s slow colour wheel. LCD models are not prone to the Rainbow effect but are pricier and the overall cost goes up due to higher maintenance expenses.
The Best Projector under £1000
Let me guess. You can’t decide whether you want to buy a new TV or a projector. There are pros and cons for both of them but I’m gonna come back to that in another post. You decided to buy a PlayStation or an Xbox console and found the best deal there is out there. In both cases, well done you. Going for one of the projectors on the list bellow, you will have a massive screen, its size measured in feet rather than inches and it would cost you less than a £1000. So let us begin with our list.
Epson EH-TW5200
Get it on Amazon
This particular model is targeted towards home entertainment and gaming users. It is LCD, so it’s a safe bet if you’re conscious about the Rainbow effect. It boasts Full HD with a native resolution of 1920×1080 and a contrast ratio of 15000:1. It weighs just 2.8 kg, so it would be fairly easy to carry it around.
It offers 2D and 3D compatibility and a special gaming “fast mode” that reduces lag time and promises a smoother action without delay. The Epson has an HDMI – MHL port, which means you could project videos, music and photos from your smartphone or tablet.
One amazon reviewer said that it can be a bit noisy on best picture mode, but on cinema mode which is a lot quieter. Aslo another amazon user said that it doesn’t work with my FranSat satellite box so if you intend to use it with a FranSat satellite box you will want to check if that is correct or not.
In order to gain a better idea of how the projector performs when gaming, have a look at the following video on YouTube. (Watch in 1080p!!!)
Optoma GT1080
Get it on Amazon
The Optoma GT1080 is the 1080p model in Optoma’s gaming projector range. It is fully compatible with Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Wii U and utilises a short-throw lens. That means you get a whopping 100-inch image from just a metre distance. Most Amazon reviews mention how great the short-throw capability and the buyers seem to love it but again a few reviews mention the fan noise.
The Optoma supports a 1920×1080 resolution with a 25000:1 contrast ratio and a brightness of 2800 Lumens. That makes it possible to get good image quality even in a slightly brighter room.
2 HDMI ports mean that you can connect your gaming console and your set-top box or laptop. You also get an MHL port for those moments when you need to share the IPhone video of your friend embarrassing himself on a massive screen.
The lamp has a 5,000-hour life, so you probably won’t need to change it until the first hologram projectors hit the market.
The guys from Optoma have really done their homework, the GT1080 has an input lag of under 25ms making it the ideal PS or Xbox projector. Change the video settings to 1080p and see it in action here:
Optoma HD36
Get it on Amazon
The Optoma HD36 is another great projector from Optoma. It’s not beautiful Unless you like bulky stuff that is. But then again, if you’re like me, this think will be somewhere close to the ceiling and you will hardly ever see it. That’s not why you buy it for. You buy it for the image quality and performance. And if you do decide to buy it, you will love it from the moment you unbox it. It is a Full HD (single-chip DLP) home cinema for under £760 that boosts 3000 lumens and a 30,000:1 contrast ratio. Pretty good, right? It does come with a built in speaker but apparently it’s not that great so keep that in mind.
Amazon suggests a newer model (Optoma HD151X) but the new one seems to have a slightly lower spec than this one (2800 lumens and 28,000:1 contrast ratio) for admittedly a lower price – £650.00 at the time of writing.
InFocus IN8606HD
Get it at Amazon
This Full HD and 3D compatible projector is perfect for movies and gaming making it an ideal alternative to a TV. It supports a native 1920×1080 resolution and offers a 10,000:1 contrast ratio boasting a high-quality picture and the level of blackness is satisfyingly dark. This is a DLP projector, so Rainbow effects are still present although not as frequent as in other projectors in the same price range.
The IN8606HD has a slick black design and won’t look out of place in your living room or wherever you have decided to place it. I highly recommend using it in a properly dimmed atmosphere as the lamp provides only 2,500 Lumens. Connecting peripheral electronics such as a Blu-ray player, Xbox or PS is made simple by two HDMI ports both supporting 1080p.
Before buying, you have to take into account that contrary to the Optoma GT1080, this is a long throw projector. From a distance of 1.8m, the IN8606HD projects a 60-inch diagonal image. If the room you’re going to use it in is long, this is the monitor for you.
Portability is not an issue as the InFocus weighs just 3.2 Kgs, so carrying it around wouldn’t be an obstacle. It comes equipped with 10W internal speakers which cover up the fan noise nicely. Attaching a sound system is recommended for better viewing experience.
Try doing your own brightness and contrast settings using the User Mode, as it offers the best flexibility and overall image quality. The cost of usage is relatively low with the price of a new light bulb at just £156. Also, the life rating of the light bulb is around 4,500 hours at full power and 6,000 hours in Eco mode.
If you are looking for a home entertainment projector that has capabilities for screening both video games and films, the InFocus IN8606HD would be a good place to start.
BenQ W1300
Get it on Amazon
The W1300 is part of the BenQ home entertainment projector range. There has been a lot of praise of its older counterpart – the W1070. In comparison this newer model offers features that would come in handy to the casual user such as a Lens Shift (ability to manually move the optical lens up, down, left and right), a bigger zoom ratio (1.5:1 compared to 1.2:1) which allows you to change image size without moving the projector itself, and a lower power consumption when screening (290W vs 353W)
The BenQ W1300 is a 1080p DLP projector with a contrast ratio of 10000:1. It displays 1.07 billion colours and provides a crisp and detailed picture with deep levels of black. Given the 2,200 ANSI Lumens of Brightness, you wouldn’t need to sit in complete darkness to get a perfect image. The 6x colour wheel ensures that Rainbow effects will be kept to a minimum.
As for image size, you will get 65 inches from 2 metres with a maximum of 300 inches. If you are looking for a short throw projector capable of producing a larger image from a closer distance try the Optoma GT1080 or the Short-throw version of the BenQ (65.7 inches from just a metre).
The W1300 processes action scenes fairly quickly. With a 32ms of input lag, playing online and offline games using your console or PC will be an enjoyable experience. Some people have complained about loud noise coming out of the fan, but that could easily be countered by connecting some good quality speakers.
Overall, this is a great projector capable of catering to all of your home entertainment needs. It has received a lot of positive feedback, with a 4.5/5 stars rating on Amazon, an 8/10 score from TrustedReviews and 4 out of 5 stars from PC Advisor.
Optoma HD141X
Get it on Amazon
No real Best Projector under £1000 list would be complete without a portable projector entry. The one that made the list is the Optoma HD141X. In fact, if I were to write a Best Projector Under £500, this would be the winner by far. The MHL technology is probably the most important feature here. Being a portable projector, you will probably want to connect your mobile phone or tablet to it and the MHL technology allows you to do just that. The contrast isn’t as good as it is on the other ones at just 23000:1 but the 3000 Lumens makes up for that in my book. Did I mention that it is Full 3D 1080p? Unfortunately, it suffers from the same fan noise issue most budget projectors do but at this price and with so many good features, I think it still makes a sensible purchase.
So there you go. This was my projector buying guide and a few suggestions as to what I believe the best projector under £1000 and a few close competitors. Remember that it’s not about buying the latest, most feature-rich projector. Instead, you should think about how are you going to use it. Are you using your projector in a bright room? Are you bothered about the fan noise? Will you use the projector in a small room? Only after you have answered all of these questions (and probably others I am missing) you will be able to tell which is the best projector under £1000 or the best projector for you.
Thank you for reading my projector buying guide. If you have any questions about this Best Projector Under £1000 list, drop me a message in the comments.
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