There’s no house theater experience rather like a huge predicted screen. Televisions grow by the year, once you cross the 65- inch mark, rates increase significantly– and best of luck looking for a 150- inch TELEVISION. For the typical individual, a projector is the very best method to go huge.
However projectors are likewise stuck in the past. The majority of have none of the clever functions we have actually pertained to anticipate from our Televisions, acting merely as screens for our cable television boxes and streaming gadgets. The ones that are clever tend to be of the little, portable range– not actually implied for prolonged house usage.
Optoma’s UHL55 attempts to bridge that space. It’s a $ 1,400 4K projector running Android with assistance for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant control. So here’s the TL; DR for this evaluation: the UHL55 is an actually good projector with bad software application … however that’s still more software application than its competitors.
Let’s kick things off with the specifications:
- 4K 60 hz resolution (3480 x 2160)
- Android 6.0
- 1,500 ANSI Lumens
- 250,00 0: 1 contrast ratio (vibrant mode)
- 20,00 0– 30,00 0 hour LED life
- HDR10 assistance
- 3D assistance (1080 P, active glasses require to be acquired individually)
- 30″ to 200″ screen assistance (Optoma states 80″ is perfect)
- Connection 2x HDMI, 1x USB 2.0, 1x USB 3.0, Ethernet, 3.5 mm audio out, optical out, Bluetooth 4.0 in and out
- Autofocus and Keystone
- Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa assistance.
There’s a lot loaded into a fairly little chassis. The UHL55 isn’t a portable projector, however it’s still smaller sized than a lot of 4K alternatives for the cost. It can be found in at 8 pounds and is simple to walk around where you require it.
Setting it up is uncomplicated. I decided to keep it on a table throughout screening, so it was simply a matter of discovering an empty wall and setting the adjustable feet to the appropriate height.
When switched on and established, you’ll observe the greatest problem with the projector. It isn’t running Android TELEVISION … it’s a really fundamental, extremely skinned variation of Android 6.0. That implies no native Chromecast assistance. It implies no access to the Play Shop. It implies numerous apps you attempt to sideload (done by means of USB) will be broken. Apps that do work may act in a wonky way. There were precisely good apps readily available when I evaluated it, which is even worse than comparable ‘Android however not Android TELEVISION’ projectors like the Anker Nebula Mars
Of those apps, the only ones I actually appreciated were YouTube and Netflix The Netflix app was the phone variation of the app and it often would not react when I attempted to browse around with the remote.
To any makers aiming to carry out Android on their projectors … please utilize Android TELEVISION rather. I understand it’s most likely more work, however it’s an even more enjoyable user experience.
In the meantime, if you’re considering this projector, do yourself a favor and link a streaming dongle like a Chromecast or Roku The projector’s conserving grace is that its USB port offers enough juice to power such gadgets without the requirement for an extra power brick. It’s a fairly clutter-free circumstance. Otherwise, the UHL55’s Android execution is just actually helpful for packing files from a USB stick and the periodic app.
The other part of the ‘clever’ formula is assistance for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. Now this, I can support.
Setting it up needs you to produce an Optoma account and link it to your Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa account (which is a bit more complex than it requires to be). When that’s done, you can inform the projector to carry out a range of actions, consisting of altering the volume, turning it on and off, altering the input, managing playback, and so on
It’s a remarkably robust quantity of control, and it mainly worked without a drawback. Bear in mind I have actually checked out some problems online about the consistency of this function, however I appear to have actually lucked out with my system’s efficiency. Maybe Optoma had actually tidied up its software application by the time I navigated to examining it.
House theater isn’t my location of proficiency, so I will not enter into much information relating to the image quality besides to state that I believed the general efficiency in a dark space was remarkable, particularly if this is your very first venture into projectors. I just predicted it onto white walls and was pleased with the resolution and colors with both basic and HDR material. Even 1080 p material looked excellent thanks to some strong upscaling.
You have actually most likely heard by now that 4K isn’t required unless you’re sitting actually near a screen or have an enormous TELEVISION. Well, when predicting a 150- inch image, those additional pixels are definitely welcome– it made me value 4K material a lot more than I usually can on my meager 55- inch TELEVISION. Though the UHL55 utilizes pixel moving innovation to attain its 4K resolution, the image is razor-sharp, even at the corners. The absence of a zoom lens might assist because regard.
Finishing the house theater experience are the speakers, tuned by Optoma’s NuForce audio group. I usually do not anticipate much from projector speakers, however I was happily shocked with the UHL55– it’s much better than the integrated speakers on some Televisions, with a good quantity of kick and volume. You can utilize the UHL55 as a Bluetooth speaker, and bothersome as it might be, it does a quite sweet task in a pinch.
It deserves keeping in mind that considering that the UHL55 utilizes an LED light, the contrast isn’t rather as excellent as more a conventional lamp-based projector, however the other side is that its approximated durability is far much better: 20,00 0– 30,00 0 hours (depending upon your brightness mode), compared to simply 4,00 0 to 10,00 0 on among Optoma’s own lamp-based projectors. Standard projector lights likewise tend to somewhat alter color and brightness with time. Select your toxin.
I have however 2 genuine cautions with the image quality. One, if you’re predicting a big image, the 1,500 Lumens ranking will not do you much excellent in the daytime. I discovered I needed to go down to something closer to 65 inches for something I ‘d be pleased in a decently-lit space.
2 … input lag efficiency isn’t excellent, so this will not be your very first option for video gaming.
Optoma declares an input lag of 70 ms when in Video game Mode, which is expensive for any sort of competitive video gaming, though fine for a lot of other titles. Nevertheless, the input lag appears to be considerably greater from lower resolution sources. The UHL55 showed more input lag with my Nintendo Change linked than it did from 4K sources, even in video game mode. I ‘d presume this is due to the fact that of resolution upscaling, which I discovered no chance to disable. The majority of 4K projectors have dull video gaming efficiency, however it’s something to remember nonetheless. Ideally, this is something the business can fix with a firmware upgrade.
My impressions may come off as combined, however I rather like this little projector. I’m baffled by the Android execution and I want it were brighter, however the reality stays that it is among the only projectors with its specific mix of functions. The image quality is actually excellent, voice control is cool, and I ‘d rather have a wonky variation of Android than no variation at all, as long as it does the job.
The concern then ends up being whether it deserves the cash. For around $1,400, you can discover a lot of other 4K projectors that offer a brighter image or more contrast. There’s Optoma’s own UHD50, BenQ’s HT2550 and TK800, and Viewsonic’s PX727, among others. If you want to invest $1,700, Optoma’s UHD51 A supports Alexa and Google Assistant too, simply without Android.
However these do not offer the UHL55’s versatility, capacity for upgrades, Bluetooth abilities, or LED durability. It might not be as clever as it must be, however at the minimum, it gets points for creativity. Let’s hope the next variation features Android TELEVISION.
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Released February 8, 2019– 00: 09 UTC.
