One of the breakout hits of the tech world over the last couple of years has been the best portable projectors. They’ve really rocketed in popularity because people love the idea of being able to point the projector at a wall anywhere to instantly have big-screen entertainment.
Well, stop that right now. The fun police are here, and we’ve had reports of people enjoying their media in a sub-standard manner. Okay, you can keep doing it if the portability of these mobile projectors is vital, but if you’re investing in one of the best projectors that will stay static – and especially one of the best 4K projectors, which are not cheap – you really need to make sure you invest in a good screen, and not just project onto a wall, or the cheapest screen you can find.
I recently got a useful demo from Hisense – which makes some of the best ultra short throw projectors, and also has a line of ‘Laser TVs’ that combine a smart UST projector with a matching screen of a specific size – to show what a big difference a good projector screen makes.
The demo in question involved the Hisense PX3-Pro projector, which we think is up there with the top choices available today, beaming a picture onto a special-constructed screen that was half plain white plastic screen, and half the company’s own Ambient Light Rejection screen, which is what’s bundled in with its Laser TVs, but you can buy separate ALR screens for any projector.
The difference was immediately obvious and is clear from the images I took too, but Hisense had some numbers to back it up.
At a projection size of 100 inches from the PX3-Pro, the image on the plain side of the screen was capable of hitting about 250 nits of brightness as visible when you’re sitting in front of it. The ALR screen side was capable of hitting around 450 nits. That’s nearly double the brightness, and it totally changes not just the brightness of white tones, but the richness of the colors, and even the depth and contrast of the image. A good screen doesn’t just enable better brightness, but deeper black tones, for a massive upgrade to the overall cinematic feel.
Let’s shed some light on the situation
So, what’s going on here? The way that ALR screens work is to control the angle of light once it hits them. When you watch a projector, you’re only seeing reflections – the screen you’re looking at isn’t generating its own light, unlike the best TVs.
But it’s not just the light from the projector that’s being reflected, it’s all the light in the room, which then washes out the light you want from the movie. So the trick is to find a way to only reflect the right kind of light, and we can basically do this with the power of geometry.
These screens are designed with a surface that adjusts the angle light reflects, based on the knowledge that light from a projector is only going to be coming from a particular angle and that you’ll be sitting right in front of it. So, light coming from the sides is ‘rejected’ (ie, absorbed to bounced away from your eyes), and light coming from below (in the case of a UST projector) is reflected at an angle focused right on your seating position.
So the same amount of light is coming from the projector, but you’re getting a better-focused version of it, and with less interference – meaning you see nearly double the brightness level without changing your projector.
The downside? Naturally, this type of screen is more expensive to buy – but it also means you really do have to be facing the screen pretty directly. It won’t be good for a room where people might view from an angle because it will actually look worse than the cheap screen. That’s because it’s actively trying not to bounce the projector’s light off to the sides. So: great for home theater, not so great for a big Superbowl get-together.
I think a lot of people are tempted to use a cheap screen (if any at all) with cheap projectors – but you can make that cheap projector look like a pricier model with a better screen! The type of screen might be the difference between whether a projector can replace your TV longer-term or not.
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