If you're in the market for a UST (Ultra Short Throw) projector, you'll be interested in the results of this weekend's 2022 Projector Shootout. Day one of the event included five of the top UST projectors and was held today (Saturday, December 10) at The Company building in Manhattan.
Robert Zohn of Value Electronics first started hosting TV shootouts at his shop in Westchester, NY in 2004 and has been holding the event every year since. The event expanded to UST projectors last year and will also include long throw projectors in Day Two of the event this year (tomorrow). If you are not familiar with UST projectors and how they differ from traditional long throw projectors, check out this article:
The projector shootout is co-hosted by electronics retailer Value Electronics and B2B Tech publication Dealerscope. The event is designed to reveal the video performance of the best UST projectors by setting them all up in the same room, on identical screens (Seymour Screens "Radiant White"), fed by identical content. Content included test patterns, video clips and stills, each selected to highlight specific areas of video performance: color accuracy, contrast, motion resolution, luminance and detail/sharpness in both bright and dark scenes.Content varied from 480i legacy interlaced videos to SDR (standard dynamic range) HD and 4K content and full Ultra HD 4K content with HDR (Digh Dynamic Range).
Prices ranged from $3,500 to $6,500 and five different manufacturers were represented.
Master of Ceremonies for the 2022 event was industry expert Philip Jones of Projector Reviews and Sound United. Mr. Jones is the publisher, technical editor and lead reviewer of ProjectorReviews.com. Jason Dustal, ISF Instructor and Engineer with Murideo led testing operations during the Shootout event.
Rather than professionally calibrate each projector, the event hosts chose to set each TV to the picture preset that was most accurate in color reproduction, then set color temperature to the most accurate color of white (closest to "D65" or 6500 degrees Kelvin). The rationale was that buyers of this type of projector are less likely to pay for a professional calibration than buyers of more expensive long throw projectors. If an owner of one of these projectors does hire a professional calibrator, they will be likely to get even higher performance from their display.
On the AWOL projector, they used the "Movie" picture mode for SDR content and color temperature was set to "Standard." For HDR content on the AWOL, they switched to "Sport" mode, color temperature was still "Standard." The Epson was set to its "Natural" preset for both HDR and SDR content and color temperature was set to "7" for HDR and SDR. The Hisense projector was set to "Theater Day" for SDR, and "Standard" mode for SDR. Color temperature was set to Low on both. On the LG projector, "Expert Bright" picture mode was used for HDR content and "Cinema Home" was used for SDR content. Color temperature was set to "Warm" for both SDR and HDR. On the Samsung projector, picture mode of "Movie" and color temperature of "Warm 1" was used for both SDR and HDR content.
AVProStore provided switching, distribution, and test equipment while MetraAV provided HDMI cables (48Gbs/HDMI 2.1-compliant).
Expert judges from the video and film industries were on hand to rank each projector on their performance on these tests. All of the projectors had their strong points and prospective buyers should check out the scorecard below to see how each projector scored in each testing category. Based on your personal preferences (e.g., viewing in a dark room vs. bright room, viewing movies vs. sports) and your budget, one of the projectors with a lower overall performance score may actually be a better option for you.
After the judging was over, results were tabulated for all categories and a new "King" was crowned for UST projectors. Winning the highest scores in both the SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) and HDR (High Dynamic Mode) categories was the LG HU915QB. So it follows that the new "King of UST Projectors" for 2022 is the LG HU915QB.
In second place was the AWOL Vision LTV-3500 and in third place overall was the Epson LS800. Although the LG took first place in nine of the fifteen test categories, it was not rated the best projector for bright content. The AWOL Vision LTV-3500 produced the brightest overall image which may make it the best choice for bright room viewing. And the least expensive projector in the bunch, the Epson LS800 nabbed the top scores for motion resolution and HDR tone mapping which means it should look particularly good with fast-moving action-oriented films in Ultra HD with HDR.
The overall scores for the top three projectors (ranked out of a possible 10 points) were:
The Projector Shootout continued with the long throw projector shootout on day two. You can follow along online with the live stream broadcast here: YouTube.com/TheRealShaneLee
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