Best Home Entertainment Projector: Tech Awards 2023 Editor's Choice series

Best Entertainment Projector: Tech Awards 2023 Editor's Choice series

Best Home Entertainment Projector

In today's fast-paced and ever-evolving world, we understand the importance of immersive gaming and entertainment experiences, and that's where the Best Home Entertainment Projector Award category shines. This is a new class of projectors that are geared to offer exceptional performance in gaming and regular entertainment scenarios on the big screen through 4K upscaling capabilities to bring out crisp visuals and vivid colours to swift response times and seamless connectivity through built-in wireless connectivity and have a Smart TV OS built-in for ease of usability. Just a few years back, such features were unheard of in projectors, but in a post-Covid era, these are must-have expectations.

To be clear, this category is different from home theatre class projectors, which would appeal to movie connoisseurs with high standards and even their own 'movie room'. The Home Entertainment projector class can still offer an enjoyable movie experience without high price tags and focus on ease of use, setup and versatile deployment. Best of all, they come with built-in audio to keep it as simple as possible to get your entertainment needs going fast out of the box, be it for ad-hoc usage or a fixed setup in place.

These tall and relatively new requirements also mean there aren't many options in the market that have ready solutions that meet our entrance criteria to be applicable for Tech Awards 2023 consideration. Here then, are our two most apt nominees that can bring worlds to life, offering an unparalleled experience to both gamers and movie enthusiasts alike at around the S$3k price range.

Nominees:

• BenQ X3000i
• Epson EH-TW6250

Note that while Epson was only made available locally recently, the model itself was launched overseas last year, and thus qualifies for our Tech Awards assessment.

And the winner is…

The undisputed winner of the Best Projector Award is the BenQ X3000i, which has a great mix of cutting-edge features and great performance. One of the main things that set the X3000i apart from its worthy rival, the Epson TW6250, is that it is an excellent gamer. The BenQ X3000i was made with gamers in mind – with a very low input lag, which means it responds almost instantly as you would expect with a gaming monitor or TV. Coupled with its 4K resolution, HDR support, high refresh rate support and a high contrast ratio, the X3000i delivers astonishingly lifelike visuals, transforming ordinary gaming sessions into immersive, next-level experiences.

In addition to its exceptional gaming performance, the BenQ X3000i shines in the entertainment realm as well. It features an impressive brightness of 3,000 ANSI lumens, which ensures vibrant and vivid images even in well-lit indoor environments (to a certain extent since it's difficult to counter a sunny environment). This aspect outshines – albeit just a little – the Epson TW6250, which, despite offering commendable image quality, is unable to overthrow the X3000i's brilliance. After all, the X3000i is the first projector to use a 4LED light source, which in our usage is notably better than many tri-LED light sources of its class. Furthermore, the X3000i is equipped with BenQ's proprietary CinematicColor technology, providing accurate and wide colour gamut coverage. This resulted in better HDR scene handling and dark environments on the BenQ as we noticed more 'black crush' on the Epson unit in similar scenes.

The audio was also no slouch from the built-in dual 5W BenQ Trevolo audio-optimized speakers, which we found to be more than satisfactory for immediate usage needs that you won't necessarily miss out on not connecting it with your standalone audio system or soundbar. If you don't intend to have one, that's one more reason why the BenQ X3000i is a suitable contender for an all-in-one, flexible projection solution.

Beyond its unparalleled performance in gaming and entertainment, the BenQ X3000i also offers a user-friendly experience. Its intuitive interface, coupled with an array of connectivity options such as dual HDMI 2.0b inputs with eARC support (meaning you can get Dolby Atmos support with suitable external speakers supporting this standard), USB, and wireless streaming support, make it a breeze to set up and enjoy in various scenarios. The projector's modern design and quiet operation also endeared it to us.

All in all, the BenQ X3000i's remarkable combination of state-of-the-art gaming features, exceptional image quality, and user-focused design has secured its well-deserved victory in this category. For those looking towards a more palatable price point, the Epson is still a strong value consideration too, but not with the same design, features and performance expectations.

For more details on how we rated our nominees and to find out our usage experience of each device, check out the full reviews and articles listed in the References section below.

Meanwhile, check out our other Tech Awards 2023 Editor's Choice winners from the team behind HardwareZone and HWM.

References

• BenQ X3000i review
• Epson TW6250 (review coming soon)