Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I really, really, really wanted to like this projector, but after giving a really good test I just cannot justify it for the cost and picture quality. First, there are very few ultra short throw projectors on the market, and even fewer 1080p HD ones. I believe there are like two designed for home theater use. Sony has an amazing one, but it is $30k and has a 4k picture. So, this is a space with little competition and it seems like a bit of a niche market. With that being said, the attempt here is great. The projector is super small and designed fairly well. The picture quality is "pretty good" in a completely dark environment with a decent screen. Once you start adding ambient light, the picture quality starts to fade fast. I realize that this is true of all projectors, but this one is particularly poor at dealing with ambient light. You have to keep in mind that this is only 1000 lumens, and is likely not putting out that much. Now, yes it is closer to the screen, so brightness is a little less important, but this is still not a "bright" projector by any means. I have the settings calibrated and energy savings on minimum and never really thought the picture was bright and alway felt it was rather dim. A Pixar cartoon looks pretty great, but your typical drama, horror, etc. movies with darker images are just always disappointing with this unit. Also, because it is ultra short throw, you are basically severely limited in screen choices. Basically, you can only use a white or grey screen. You cannot use an ambient light rejecting screen (ALR) or a screen that increases the gain (>1.0), as the severe angle of an ultra short throw will not work with these screens. The screen will treat the projector as ambient light because it is coming from such a low angle. These screens are designed to throw back the picture at the light source, which is usually fine with a short throw or standard throw unit. There is a screen made by Screen Innovations (aka black diamond) that is designed specifically for ultra short throw projectors, but the 92" is $4,200, so the cost is pretty high. Because the projector is so close to the wall, the placement is critical and very unforgiving. The slightest nudge will send your picture into weird crooked and uneven angles. So you may end up constantly having to fidget with it. They also don't really give you a lot of options for adjustment. There are 4 feet, but there is not a lot of room to play with and I could really never get the picture perfectly square. The fan on this is pretty loud. I have seen some reviews that point out that because it is in the front of the room and not over your head it is quieter, and perhaps that is true, but any medium to quiet scenes in the movie you are going to clearly hear the fan and it is distracting. We generally watch a lot of horror movies, so there are too many dark and quiet scenes where this unit just ruins the experience for me. You are able to get a pretty big picture size from relatively close. I have a pretty standard TV stand and placed this on top of it after removing my 65" TV. Without moving the stand, I was able to get an 84" picture size out of the box so to speak. If I pull my TV stand away from the wall about 4" (it is already away from the wall about 9" or so) I can increase the picture to 92" fairly easily. In order to get a 100" image, the mirror has to be 27" away from the wall, which seems like it would be a bit difficult to do with a typical TV stand, but I suppose if the top of your stand is deep enough you can do it. The color accuracy seemed pretty good. There are a lot of picture settings, but unfortunately most of them are horrible. Vivid, Standard, or any color temperature outside of Warm makes the image and colors look pretty horrible in my opinion. I feel as if there is a very small range of good picture settings and they just increased the range to make you feel better about the options. The TrueMotion settings all look horrible to me and had noticeable stutter or judder. I am posting a picture of the image on my wall before I got my screen. One issue I had was with a predominantly black image, like when opening credits are rolling or a fade to black is happening, etc. There is a noticeable shadowing in the top corners and a huge black rectangle in the bottom left corner. I am posting a picture of this so you can see, but it was very annoying and I am not sure what is causing it. At one point, after turning on my PS3, the projector refused to see the signal once the Blu-ray started playing. It showed the PS3 menu just fine and the loading icon, but once the menu came up on the disc, the projector said there was no signal. I tried switching HDMI inputs and a few other things and nothing would fix it. I stuck the disc in my PS4 and carried on. Now, after a restart it seems to have gone away, but this was a really odd bug or fluke. Finally, I was disappointed to see that my unit from Amazon had clearly been used by another person and was returned. When I am paying nearly $1,300 for something like this, I expect it to be brand new, never used or opened. Items of this dollar value that were used and returned should be sold as open box or refurbished and I feel that this was pretty shady of them to do. I knew that it was used because the batteries were loose in the box and out of their shrink wrap (which was torn open and left in the box. The wrapper for the projector was not cleanly placed around the unit and there were some other indications that things were just not from the factory new. If I were going to keep this, I would have requested a replacement unit be sent to me as mine was a return and the black box issue seems like it might be worth trying a different unit. But, because of the dimness, poor picture quality, poor performance in even low ambient light situations, and several of the other issues I listed above, I just cannot justify this purchase even though I have really tried hard to convince myself it is great. I hope that this unit helps get the attention of the competition and that more of these come to the market. This will increase innovation, drive down costs, and provide more choice to consumers. UPDATE 2/25/16: This review has been very polarizing and has sparked a lot of feedback. I wanted to address some of the most common topics here. Please remember this review, like all others, is based on my opinion and experience with this unit. Pictures I posted two pictures to show the issues I was experiencing with the projector. These are by no means meant to show the 'best possible image' you can get. I wish I had more that I could post, but I do not. If you don't trust these, you can view other users' pictures in AVSForum or elsewhere on the web. Ambient Light There has been a lot of concern around the picture with ambient light. First, this is NOT a light right next to the image. It is a Christmas tree located in the corner of the room several feet away with about 700 clear lights on. This picture was meant to show the image in ambient lighting conditions. The room was completely black with only the tree on. Yes, I realize that all projectors will be affected by a lit Christmas tree in the same room and I am showing how much this one was affected. Screen There has been concern about projecting the image on the wall vs a screen. To be clear, I started by projecting onto a wall that has a light blueish flat paint (Tradewinds from Sherwin Williams). I then purchased a screen and the image quality actually degraded. The blacks were more washed out, ambient light affected the picture more dramatically, and the brightness did not change (0 gain due to UST). So, yes I did try a screen and no it did not help, it actually made it worse in my viewing conditions, even in a completely dark room. UST vs ST vs LT I realize that this is an ultra-short throw projector and I realize that the market is very small with few competitors. I also realize that this cannot compete with the $20k Sony laser UST from CES. It may very well be true that this is the best UST image you are going to get for an affordable price, but it wasn't good enough for me. There are non-UST projectors out there at half the price that offer a better image and there are non-LED projectors out there that offer a brighter image at a higher maintenance cost (yes this is an apples to oranges statement). For me, I couldn't justify spending $1,300 on a such a poor picture and I will wait for more UST projectors with brighter images to come on the market.