The 5 Best Budget And Cheap Projectors of 2024

Looking for the best budget projector? Look no further than the BenQ TH671ST, as it delivers decent performance at a budget-friendly price. While its brightness is on the lower side, making its 1080p image look a bit washed out in well-lit rooms, it's still bright enough to look good in dim rooms. Plus, it offers decent contrast for an overall enjoyable experience in darker settings. It has a wide color gamut with excellent pre-calibration accuracy, so it's both colorful and accurate. It's a short-throw projector and can project a 60-inch image from about three feet away and up to a 180-inch image from around nine feet, which is great for smaller rooms or if you just want to have your projector installed closer to your wall or screen.

It's compact and lightweight at just 5.9 pounds, making it easy to move around compared to larger models. However, it's a bit lacking in features: it doesn't support Bluetooth or Wi-Fi out of the box, and it doesn't include a smart OS. As for connectivity, it has two 1080p @ 60Hz HDMI ports and a VGA port. The second HDMI port supports MHL, allowing you to plug your phone or tablet directly into the projector to stream content, which is handy since it lacks a USB data port. Overall, this model offers excellent value, although you'll want a streaming dongle to get the most out of it.

If you're looking to buy a projector for a brighter room, consider instead the Epson Home Cinema 1080. It projects a sharp 1080p image and is very bright, so it can easily handle moderately lit rooms, unlike the BenQ TH671ST. Unfortunately, its contrast is inadequate overall, so blacks are raised when viewed in dark rooms; if you're exclusively looking for a dark room projector, consider the BenQ instead or the ViewSonic PX701-4K below, both of which have much better contrast. Thankfully, the Epson's color gamut is alright; it's good enough to project pleasant colors, although nothing will blow your socks off. You also can't improve the unit's color accuracy with calibration, but that's fine, as it's already great out of the box.

While it isn't truly a portable projector due to its size and lack of an integrated battery, it's only 5.9 pounds, so it's easy to carry around if needed. It has automatic vertical keystone correction, which further facilitates its portability, and its optical zoom lets you adjust the projected image's size without further moving the unit. The projector has two 1080p @ 60Hz HDMI ports and a USB-B port, the latter of which lets you project supported content from your computer. Unfortunately, the unit doesn't come with a smart OS. Still, it does have Wi-Fi 5 and Miracast for screen mirroring, so all it's missing for full streaming functionality is an external streaming dongle. Overall, it's the best bright room budget projector available for most people.

If you're shopping for a dark room projector, the ViewSonic PX701-4K is one of the best budget projectors for light controlled rooms we've tested. It is decently bright, certainly bright enough for dim rooms, and its contrast is quite good, making it the best option here to watch movies with the lights off. It's not a true 4k projector, but it uses pixel shifting to achieve a higher resolution image, giving it the sharpest image of any projector on this list. Unfortunately, this unit has one big flaw regarding image quality: its color accuracy is very poor out of the box, and you can barely improve it through calibration. This model does offer a ton of performance for the price, but it's not for color purists. And for the gamers out there, this model has two HDMI ports capable of gaming at 4k @ 60Hz or 1080p @ 240Hz.

Like many other projectors, it's not exactly portable, but it's also light at 6.2 pounds, so you can move it easily if needed. It even has automatic vertical keystone correction, so it can fix any geometry errors automatically on the vertical axis. It also lacks any smart OS or wireless features, so connecting an external streaming dongle is necessary if you want any streaming features. Overall, it's a good choice for anyone willing to overlook its poor accuracy.

If you're looking for a model you can easily carry without plugging it into an outlet, the best budget portable projector we've tested is the XGIMI Halo+. It's a very small unit and weighs only 3.7 pounds, so you can easily throw it into a backpack. Plus, it has an integrated battery promising up to 2.5 hours of uninterrupted playback, which is long enough to watch most movies. With its suite of image correction features, this is truly a projector you can take on the go, as it automatically sets itself up correctly no matter where you install it. To round up the package, it comes with the Android TV smart interface, Chromecast and AirScreen support, and Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 capabilities.

Like most portable models, it's slightly dim, but with great contrast, so it projects a pleasant 1080p image as long as all the lights are off. It also has a very wide color gamut, but it isn't quite bright enough to make its colors pop. Its color accuracy is quite poor, and while you can improve it somewhat through calibration, this isn't really a product for color purists, but then again, color accuracy doesn't matter too much when projecting a movie on the side of a barn or van. It has one HDMI port, which also doubles as an eARC port, and a USB port through which you can play video files directly to the projector.

For those seeking the cheapest of the cheap yet still wanting acceptable performance, the NexiGo PJ40 (Gen 3) is a standout choice. Despite being significantly more affordable than any other projector on this list, it delivers impressive image quality, thanks to its excellent contrast, which produces vibrant images in light-controlled environments. While its brightness falls short for well-lit rooms, it truly excels in darker settings. It’s not the most colorful projector out there, as its colors are rather muted, but for the price, the overall image quality is remarkable. Just keep in mind that its pre-calibration accuracy is quite poor, so you'll need to calibrate it if you care about color accuracy.

The NexiGo offers an impressive range of features for its price point. It supports Bluetooth 5.1, Wi-Fi, and seamless casting via Miracast and Apple AirPlay. Unfortunately, it has a rather basic implementation of Android TV, so a streaming dongle is recommended for any streaming aficionado. The projector features two HDMI ports, one with ARC support, great for soundbars. It also comes with a 20W built-in speaker system, providing a convenient audio solution for those who prefer not to use external speakers. Additional features include a dedicated Game Mode and HDR10 support. Ultimately, while its brightness may not suffice in brightly lit spaces, it's an excellent option for dark-room setups, delivering exceptional value for the cost.