A Budget 4K Beamer
AS YOU might expect, low-cost projectors are much more common than premium models. Survey the market, and you’ll find loads of options in the under-$3,000 range, while projectors priced above $10,000 are rare birds, indeed. Even so, affordable models are by no means basic: a look at the under- $1,500 range will turn up plenty of projectors with features such as 4K and HDR10 support—BenQ’s $1,499 CinePrime HT3550, for example.
What lies in store for the discriminating home theaterphile when they venture beneath that $1,500 price threshold? You mainly forego projectors with display chips featuring true 3,840 × 2,160 (or higher) resolution like those available from JVC and Sony. DLP models like the HT3550 combine a lower-resolution chip (BenQ uses the latest 0.47-inch DLP XPR offering from Texas Instruments) with a rapid pixel-shifting process that effectively achieves Ultra HD onscreen resolution. And while that might sound like a workaround, it’s hard to argue with the results, since even fussy viewers would be hard-pressed to distinguish a pixel-shifted Ultra
