OPTOMA UHL55

The Optoma UHL55 projector is, we think, quite possibly the interesting product to cross our desk in years. We haven’t seen anything quite like it, and we mean that in a good way.

EQUIPMENT

So a projector, huh? What’s so unusual about that? Really, it’s the way the Optoma UHL55 combines several different bits of existing technology into a single, neat package. And a remarkably inexpensive package at that.

First point of note: this is an UltraHD projector. It uses DLP technology. The only description of the Digital Micromirror Device we could find for this projector was thus: ‘Single 0.47” 4K UHD DMD DLP by Texas Instruments’. That sounds to us like it’s the special small 1080p DMD with 4× pixel-shifting technology that we’ve seen in another couple of products.

We know, we know, we’ve been unkind to projectors which use pixel shifting to try to generate a 4K picture. But those have generally used standard full-HD panels. We believe this very small DMD uses relatively small, somewhat spaced pixels, so there’s less overlap between the shifted pixels. And that allows every pixel to be individually resolved.

Second point