We Ranked the 6 Best Projectors

Projectors have two ways you can realistically measure brightness: in lumens or in nits. Lumens are more common, but brightness in general matters because projectors have to project light strongly enough that it overcomes ambient light without losing detail or color.

Most of the time, a projector is going to be used in a fairly dark room to help give the unit the best chance of displaying content the way it was intended, but higher lumens output let you watch content in progressively bright spaces – or across longer distances on bigger screens. For standard dynamic range content, we recommend at least 1000 lumens for most home applications, but more isn’t a bad thing, and 3000 lumens or more are ideal.

High dynamic range content requires enough light to make the dramatic differences in a scene actually stand out. Otherwise, the same rules that would apply to SDR brightness apply here.

You’ll want a HDR brightness of 2000 lumens at least to use the projector and enjoy HDR content the way it was intended, but a higher brightness is always nicer. Low brightness will make content look dimmer, less vibrant and can cause the image to completely disappear if the ambient light is too strong.

Contrast ratios are responsible for creating more dynamic images, with sharp contrasts between dark spots and bright spots. For content to look how it was intended, contrast needs to be good enough, otherwise images look washed out.

Because projectors are sensitive to the ambient light in a room, it’s important to set up the projector in a place where light is less likely to interfere – or to have enough brightness coming out of the bulb that light cannot interfere as easily. Either approach helps preserve the dynamic nature of images, and allows your contrast ratio to actually shine. Generally speaking, we recommend a contrast ratio of at least 2000:1, but higher is always welcomed.

Different color gamut are used for different types of media and represent the colors used by that form of media when creating the content. In the case of DCI-P3, this gamut is favored by film creators for making movies, so being able to cover large parts of it with a projector means the projector is better at showing movies.

We recommend a coverage of at least 90% to ensure you can reproduce accurate colors when watching movies and enjoy the films the way they were intended to be seen. Any lower and you begin to lose accuracy, which impacts how the movie looks by distorting the director’s creative vision.

If you watch a lot of high-definition TV such as HD sports, you’ve experienced the Rec.709 gamut. This gamut is employed mostly by HD television, so covering as much of it as you can is ideal. Fortunately, the Rec.709 gamut is smaller than the DCI-P3 gamut, so if you have good coverage of DCI-P3, it’s very likely you have good coverage of Rec.709. This gamut is also known as BT.709.

Regardless, we recommend you have a Rec.709 coverage of at least 90%, especially if HD TV is what you spend most of your time watching. Not covering enough of the gamut directly contributes to seeing inaccurate colors on things like sports uniforms or otherwise vibrant sets on your favorite TV shows.

Input lag is primarily an issue when it comes to playing video games on your projector. If you’re trying to enjoy fast-paced shooters or are using projector to play competitive modes, you’ll need a low input lag to “keep the projector out of your way”, so to speak. High input lag causes delays in your inputs and makes it harder to react to action on screen because your own physical reactions start to count for less than the projector’s ability to process what you’re doing.

For this reason, we recommend an input lag of 40 ms or less, but lower is always better, and for really competitive games we’d recommend less than 15 ms. Any more than that and your projector is better suited to playing games casually, though if you don’t play anything fast paced, input lag is less of an issue.

Projectors have two ways you can realistically measure brightness: in lumens or in nits. Lumens are more common, but brightness in general matters because projectors have to project light strongly enough that it overcomes ambient light without losing detail or color.

Most of the time, a projector is going to be used in a fairly dark room to help give the unit the best chance of displaying content the way it was intended, but higher lumens output let you watch content in progressively bright spaces – or across longer distances on bigger screens. For standard dynamic range content, we recommend at least 1000 lumens for most home applications, but more isn’t a bad thing, and 3000 lumens or more are ideal.

Much like televisions, a projector has a refresh rate too, and it has the same effect here as it does on TVs. Higher refresh rates help reduce visual tearing (especially when gaming), and improve overall “smoothness” of any video you’re watching.

While 60 Hz is one of the most common refresh rates, 120 Hz is very common now, and even higher rates like 144 Hz, 165 Hz, and 240 Hz are available. We generally recommend a refresh rate of 60 Hz, and that you pay for more only if you plan on using the projector for gaming.

Projectors have to focus their image in, and minimum distance is responsible for determining how close you can get a projector to the screen before you simply can’t get a clear, focused image. If you have a small home theater, this measurement is going to matter a lot to you, and it’s part of the reason that short throw and ultra short throw projectors exist.

We don’t recommend a minimum distance – every home theater is different, and where your projector is being mounted or sat is going to depend on the design of the room and where the seats and screen are.

If minimum distance is how close you can get your projector and still focus it, maximum distance is the opposite: how far you can place a projector from the screen and still be able to focus the lens for a sharp image. If you have a very large home theater, this measurement is going to matter a lot to you, because an insufficient maximum distance is going to make getting a clear picture impossible.

We don’t recommend a maximum distance – every home theater is different, and where your projector is being mounted or sat is going to depend on the design of the room and where the seats and screen are.

Projectors can produce images of varying sizes, and the maximum screen size is as the name suggests: the maximum size screen a projector can output. Anything larger and you start to lose focus and quality.

We don’t recommend a maximum screen size for most applications unless you’re trying to use a projector for a church or outdoors on something like a garage wall. Generally speaking, you should opt for a maximum screen size that is no larger than what you’d realistically try to project. You don’t have to avoid projectors with large screen sizes, but there’s no reason to pay extra if, for example, that’s the only difference between the two choices you’ve narrowed things down to.