The 5 Best Projectors for Home Theater - Summer 2024 Reviews

If you're looking for the best home theater projector, check out the Epson Home Cinema 3800. The projector has great image quality due to its excellent brightness and great contrast. Movies are vibrant when watched in a dark room, and it's easily bright enough to handle a few lights. With its pixel-shifting technology, it also projects a sharp image, so you won't have any problems with movies looking fuzzy when projecting very large images. Even more impressive is its out-of-the-box accuracy; even color purists will be satisfied with this unit without calibrating it. It's also HDR10 and HLG compatible, but unfortunately, its color gamut isn't quite good enough for a truly engrossing HDR experience, as colors look a bit washed out. However, it has excellent coverage of the Rec. 709 color space, leading to a vibrant viewing experience when watching SDR content. This projector projects an 80-inch image at a distance of approximately 93 inches and up to 200 inches at a distance of 233 inches, or about 19 feet.

While the Home Cinema 3800 offers tremendous image quality, it's a bit dry on features. If you want to easily watch movies from streaming apps, this projector isn't for you, as it doesn't have an integrated smart OS or Wi-Fi. It also doesn't have an ARC/eARC port, so for the best sound, you'll need to connect the projector to a receiver through HDMI. It does have aptX Bluetooth support, so you can easily connect the projector to an external Bluetooth speaker or sound system. Otherwise, this unit has two HDMI ports to connect external devices and a 12V trigger-out port to automate your projector screen. Overall, the Home Cinema 3800 provides the best possible image quality for enthusiasts wanting to build a cinema room without spending an arm and a leg.

For those looking for the best of the best with money to burn, consider the Epson Home Cinema 5050UB, the best movie projector we've tested. Like the Epson Home Cinema 3800, this model has no fancy features and is focused on only one thing: watching movies. It has a small edge over our top pick in image quality but is a bit dimmer. Additionally, the 5050UB has slightly better contrast, so it looks punchier when watching movies in a dark home theater setup. However, its most noticeable advantage over the 3800 is its color gamut; it's very wide, and the projector is bright enough to project a vibrant, colorful image, even in HDR. The 5050UB's pre-calibration accuracy is equally excellent, and for purists, you can improve it even more with the projector's vast array of calibration features. It projects an 80-inch image at a distance of approximately 94 inches or about eight feet, up to a massive 300 inches at 357 inches, almost 30 feet.

Just like the cheaper 3800, this unit has two HDMI ports to connect external devices and a 12V trigger-out port if you want to automate your projector screen. This unit doesn't have an ARC/eARC port, so you'll still need to connect the projector to a receiver through HDMI for the best sound. It doesn't come with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, nor does it have a smart OS, so you'll have to invest in a streaming dongle if you wish to watch content from streaming apps. Overall, the Home Cinema 5050UB provides the best possible image quality, although it's not worth the extra cost over the top pick for most people.

The top picks are all long-throw projectors, so they require big rooms to project large images. If your chosen home theater room is on the smaller side, consider the Formovie THEATER instead, the best short-throw projector for home theaters we've tested. It projects an 80-inch image at a distance of 5.5 inches and up to 150 inches at a distance of 19.3 inches. This lets you install the projector very close to the wall or screen, making it easier to place the projector in smaller rooms than the two Epson models above. Although it doesn't reach the same brightness levels as the two Epsons on our list, it offers slightly superior contrast to even the Epson Home Cinema 5050UB. The Formovie also has a very wide color gamut, making it noticeably more colorful than the cheaper Epson Home Cinema 3800 in SDR and HDR content. However, movie enthusiasts should note that the Formovie's color accuracy is quite disappointing out of the box; you should invest in a calibrator to maximize this projector's potential.

The Formovie has three HDMI ports, including one eARC port. It supports 4k @ 60Hz signals on all HDMI ports and has two USB data ports for direct playback from a USB drive. It also features a line-out jack and an optical out port. In terms of smart features, the Formovie is well-equipped with Android TV 11.0, Chromecast support, integrated Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth; if you want to watch some content from streaming apps in between two 4k Ultra HD Blu-ray viewings, this projector has you covered. Overall, the Epson Home Cinema 3800 is a much better value and the Epson Home Cinema 5050UB offers better overall performance for a similar price. But if you're tight on space and are willing to invest in a quality calibrator, the Formovie is a very good alternative.

If you're looking for the best value home theater projector, look up the Epson Home Cinema 1080, which delivers surprisingly good performance for the price. It projects a sharp 1080p image and looks bright and relatively punchy in dark rooms due to its great brightness, although its contrast is inadequate. Its color gamut is alright; it's good enough to project pleasant colors, but certainly nothing approaching what the top pick can do. Its colors are very good for SDR content, but it can't support HDR, so its limited color coverage won't be noticeable in actual usage. You can't improve the unit's color accuracy with calibration, but that's fine, as it's already great out of the box. It projects an 80-inch image at a distance of about 71 inches up to a massive 300 inches at a distance of 270 inches, or 22.5 feet.

The projector has more features than the much more expensive Epson Home Cinema 3800. It has two 1080p @ 60Hz HDMI ports, although it lacks ARC/eARC capability. Unlike the more expensive Epson, this unit has an audio out port, so you can use that for audio if you're not willing to invest in a receiver. You can also use its USB-B port to connect it to an external audio interface. Overall, it's the best value home theater projector available and is good enough for most people outside of enthusiasts, although it looks better in dim rooms than entirely dark ones due to its disappointing contrast.

If you want a model you can easily carry without plugging it into an outlet, the best portable home cinema 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. This is long enough to watch most movies, so if your friend's basement lacks any available power outlets, this unit will do nicely. It has many image correction features: full auto keystone, autofocus, intelligent screen alignment, and obstacle avoidance, so this projector is truly easy to carry with you as it corrects its image geometry automatically as you move 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. It projects a 60-inch image at a distance of about 63 inches and up to a 120-inch image at about 126 inches, or 10.5 feet.

Like most portable models, it's slightly dim but significantly brighter than most direct competitors, and it has okay contrast, so it'll project a pleasant image when all lights are off. It also has a very wide color gamut and HDR support but isn't bright enough to take advantage of them. Its color accuracy is quite poor, and while you can improve it somewhat through calibration, this isn't a product for color purists. It has one HDMI port, which also doubles as an eARC port, and can connect to a soundbar if you want the best sound possible, or you could use the projector's 3.5mm audio jack. Finally, it has one USB port through which you can play video files directly on the projector.