But LCD makes a low lumen count seem brighter and more vibrant than a DLP projector with the same rating. LCDs tend to have a sharper, crisper image and appear brighter than DLPs even at a lower lumen count. At five inches from the wall, the maximum image is 80 inches. Currently, there are five kinds of projectors you can get for your home: DLP, LCD, LED, LCOS, and laser. Making the image smaller can better help combat the ambient light in a bright room. This means that, without moving the projector, you can have an image that ranges anywhere from 80 inches diagonally across to 132 inches across. The Vava Laser TV has excellent 4K image quality and impressive sound. My top pick is the $899 Epson Home Cinema 2150. The audio is surprisingly loud for only having one 5W speaker. The best projector out of the models I tested the one Ill be recommending to my friends is the $899 Epson 2150. The best projector for your home or apartment. So from about 11 feet away, it can get an image as small as 80 inches diagonally, all the way up to 100 inches. At maximum volume, you can still hear the fan if the projector is near your head. Whether this design is preferable really comes down to your space and needs, but it does have some drawbacks. The biggest difference is that its a DLP projector, so its rated 3600 lumens of brightness dont make it brighter than the 2150. The Optoma UHD52ALV is a good option if you want a 4K projector on a tighter budget. Theres also a manual lens shift so you can raise or lower the image, and a manual focus. And as for content, every projector I tested has an HDMI input, internal speakers, and also an audio output, so I was easily able to stream things by plugging in my Roku stick. Lastly, the Vava gets a lot hotter than other projectors, enough to feel a difference in the room. Use cinema mode, which has deep blacks, for watching a movie at night. But in practice, it doesnt feel that dim. Lastly, the HD146Xs built-in 3W speaker is not loud, but the fan is loud. But if youre viewing in the middle of the day, youll likely need to put your shades down, especially if you dont have a screen. It has an app store, but there are barely any useful apps. Unlike traditional projectors that are mounted or set up on the opposite side of the room, the Vava is an ultra-short-throw projector. Then theres the throw ratio, which is how big the image is in relation to how far it is from the surface. So even though the image is technically the best and the brightest that I tested, Id only recommend this if you really dont want to get a TV, but basically want a TV, and you have a big budget. After three months and way too many movies, Ive found the projector best suited for most situations. The brightness, which is rated at 2500 lumens, is lower than youll see other projectors rated. Audio isnt bad either. At $2,800, its triple the price of the Epson 2150 and more expensive than even OLED televisions. Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to the Vava projector as a fully laser-based system it is not. I used an inexpensive 80-inch Panoview pop-up screen you can find a similar one for around $100 but it still made for a better experience than just pointing the projector at my wall. If you have a small, dark room, this projector is great for it. There are two 5-watt speakers, so it can get loud enough, but its a bit empty-sounding with not a lot of bass. The fans are also loud, though, and it gets hot. The vivid or cinema modes are much nicer. In addition, the HD146X offers nice contrast, which produces a punchy image. 709 that most other projectors use. The image is great: its big, its bright, and the color reproduction is pretty. Its a 1080p LCD projector with a great, bright image, good speakers, and its extremely easy to set up. There are also manual knobs for focus, zoom, lens shift, and keystone, which are way easier to use than digital controls. 4K projectors are a lot more expensive and not as common as 4K TVs because the pixels on projector chips are incredibly small. The zoom lens is 1.6x, which is more than the average you get on most projectors in this range. You can watch this with some ambient daylight, but definitely not when theres unfiltered light pouring in through a window. Before getting into specifics though, there are a few basics to think about when youre shopping for a projector. Vava says its working on getting more, but right now, the only really useful ones were YouTube and Disney Plus. Youll benefit a lot from getting a projector screen, especially if youll be watching with a little daylight. See our ethics statement. Low-end laser projectors are typically around $2,000, although you can find some smaller ones for less. For those who want 4K resolution but dont want to spend nearly $3,000 for it, Optomas UHD52ALV is my recommendation. The projector uses Rec. The 1.1x zoom lens has a shorter range than the 2150, so its hard to make the image really big in my apartment. I would avoid putting this right next to your head. All of this comes at a much higher cost, however. And unlike a lamp-based projector, where a bulb emits light through a color wheel to produce the image, laser projectors generate only the exact colors needed for an image. It is a DLP projector that uses a laser light source instead of bulb. So to give them the best answer, I tested nine different projectors in my apartment. We regret the error. Its hard to tell the difference, though. Using the menus can be a chore, but once its set up, the image stays good when you make it bigger, too and it can get large: up to about 300 inches, which is double the Vava. But basically, the important things are: how easy it is to set up, audio, image quality, and price. The projectors fans are very quiet, and you can easily plug in speakers to its 3.5mm audio output, but its not totally necessary. Theres a manual 1.3x zoom adjustment. It costs $549 and shares many of the same specs as the Epson 2150. DLP, or digital light processing, and LCD projectors are lamp-based, so the bulb will eventually degrade, but theyre much more affordable than laser projectors. The 2150s built-in 10-watt speakers are loud. If youre watching in a room with a lot of darkness and have external speakers, the HD146X will offer a great image at a price you cant beat for its quality. Thats easier than it may seem because the Epson 2150 has automatic keystoning. Meanwhile, short-throw projectors can project a large image with only a few feet between them and the wall, and ultra-short-throw projectors are basically right up against the wall. But since its a projector, I think its nicer to look at. It has 3000 lumens of brightness but with a screen you can watch in daylight. Most of the models I tested max out at 1080p resolution, but we do have a couple of 4K picks as well. It has two 10w speakers, so its louder and sounds much better than most of the other projectors I tested. You can get up to a 150-inch image if you move the projector 10-inches from the wall, but then it starts encroaching into your room. This efficiency makes for a much brighter image and very accurate colors and deep black levels and contrast. The 2150 is an LCD projector, which gives it a crisp image even when projecting a 130-inch image, and it can project up to 300 inches. But for this test, we kept the budget as reasonable as possible. Its bright enough to watch during the day without a screen, though pulling the shades down on your windows always helps. Keystoning is important because it allows you to straighten out the image so the projector doesnt need to be perfectly parallel with the wall. Its image is sharp even when its so big, but the colors, specifically the darks, are muddy. The BenQ TH671ST costs $750 and allows you to project a 100-inch image from a little less than five feet away. At 11 feet away, the image is about 100 inches, which is big, but I wish it could get even bigger. The UHD52ALV costs $1,799, so theres still a premium for its higher resolution. Its brightness of 3000 lumens isnt very bright, so if youre trying to get a bigger image, like 200 inches or more, youll need darkness. Projectors with a laser source are not lamp-based, so they require less maintenance; on average, the laser lasts 5x longer than a bulb would. The image quality is closest to that from a TV. That great picture comes at a price, however: the Vava is the most expensive model I tested by over a thousand dollars. If you want a really big image or if your space is a lot smaller, then you should get a short-throw projector. The Optomas image modes are also less flexible, and the bright mode produces an unusably green image. The caveat is it doesnt project true 4K; it uses pixel shifting to double the 1920 x 1080 resolution for a total of approximately 4 million pixels. The brightness is rated at 3500 lumens, which is just over half of what Vava claims. You can spend a lot more on high-end, dedicated home theater projectors. For this test, I looked at DLP and LCD types, which are common for home projectors and also one DLP projector that utilizes a laser light source instead of a bulb, ranging in price from $530 to $2,800. If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. You can also use a laptop, Apple TV, or whatever device you use to stream video. The Vava is a DLP projector, but as you can tell from the name, it uses a laser light source, which is brighter and more vibrant than the lamp-based DLP or LCD models. If price is less important than image quality, Vavas Laser TV is a compelling option. Its not as crisp as the 2150 either, again, due to it being DLP instead of LCD. It actually appears darker and less vibrant. If youre plugging in a streaming device, you dont need the app store, but its still required to connect to the internet, so its just an unnecessary hassle. The color made it feel like watching film: everything has a golden, 1970s-style vibe to it, which I think is partly because of its color space. There were a few other things I didnt like about Vava: the setup process was annoying by far the most intensive. Its extremely bright and crisp with great color. In terms of ease of use, its very similar to the Epson 2150 with manual knobs for zoom and focus. Another great 4K projector budget option is the Epson 3800 for $1,499. Toggling to dynamic mode makes for the best daytime image, which is a great thing about Epson projectors: you can easily switch between viewing modes, and each one looks great. The Vava is much larger and heavier than traditional projectors, mostly due to the full 60W Harman Kardon soundbar built into it. It has 1080p resolution, but unless youre in a completely dark theater with a screen, its not going to look noticeably different than 4K. Even though the HD146X is one of Optomas less expensive options, the image still stands out. Out of all the projectors I tested, Optoma projectors have some of the nicest images. The BenQ TH671ST is ideal if you have a limited amount of room but still want a projector instead of a TV. It provides much louder, fuller sound than the built-in speakers on all of the other projectors. All of the settings are digital, including the focus, which I find very hard to know if its accurate. But if youre trying to do a movie night with friends or you have loud street noise, Id recommend speakers, which you can hook up through a 3.5mm audio output. First, there are a lot of specs and choices to make when it comes to projectors: lumens, laser or lamp-based, DLP or LCD, 1080 or 4K, short-throw, zoom lenses, projection size theres a lot. A less expensive but still excellent projector is the Optoma HD146X. I didnt find the need for external speakers, but there is a 3.5mm audio output to hook them up if you want. There are many reasons you might want a projector over a TV: you may want a bigger image than a TV can offer, or you dont like the look of a TV in your living room, or you want to have casual movie nights with your friends or family. This zoom lens paired with all of the other controls makes the projector really flexible and easy to use; if you move or if you end up putting the projector in a different room, youll be able to customize it to the new space very quickly. Its manageable, though: if this projector is for your bedroom, the speaker will be fine.