Optoma HD29H assessment: the very best gaming projector due to its low latency and 120Hz refresh fee

Optoma’s HD29H is comfortably the very best gaming projector I’ve ever used. And I’ve spent a very long time gaming underneath the mirrored mild of a high-powered beamer.

One of the largest regrets I’ve from transferring into my present digs is abandoning the right projection wall I had in the lounge of my previous flat. I used to be in a position to go away my projector completely in place and beam an enormous picture onto the wall at will. It was superb. There was the hungover new years day the place I spent three strong hours screaming for The Sound of Music to complete, a full month of enjoying the whole lot of GTA V at virtually 1:1 scale, so many iterations of co-op FIFA Career Mode games, and numerous hours of PC gaming writ massive throughout the eight years I lived there. Halcyon days.

And all these years of projector enjoyment got here from utilizing what’s truly not a very succesful beamer for gaming. That’s as a result of gaming on a projector has historically been an train in compromise; it’s important to compromise on picture high quality, refresh fee, and gaming latency. With the Optoma HD29H, nonetheless, none of them is a priority.

There are three key specs for the Optoma HD29H which mark it out as a superb gaming projector: the decision, the refresh fee, and the extent of enter lag. While you might take a look at a 1080p projector as behind the instances on this 4K-ready period of ours, it means you can get severe efficiency out of even essentially the most modest of gaming {hardware}.

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And that’s necessary once you’re speaking a few gaming projector with a refresh fee that stretches as much as 120Hz. That’s solely accessible utilizing the HD29H at 1920 x 1080, however does imply there will likely be instances the place you may get your body fee mighty near the refresh fee on the less-demanding of titles.

The third key spec is the measured enter lag of the Optoma. At simply 8.4ms that is about as fast a response as you’ll get from any projector. I do know numerous avid gamers will take a look at a TN gaming monitor’s 1ms response time, and the ensuing super-low enter lag, and conclude it’s going to be vastly superior to this HD29H when it comes to gaming pace, and so they’d be proper. But the 8.4ms enter lag right here is extremely low for a projector, and definitely higher than even the very best TVs used for gaming.

Now, the HD29H can be rated as able to hitting 4K and delivering HDR visuals however, truthfully, should you’re this £700 beamer as some form of reasonably priced 4K HDR projector you then’re going to be slightly dissatisfied. HDR gaming on PC is an absolute mess proper now, with seemingly no-one prepared to face up and kind it out, however that apart the HDR picture the Optoma tries to color is one which’s unforgivably washed out. When you’re in search of the colourful, detailed colors of a excessive dynamic vary image the flat expertise the HD29H affords actually doesn’t encourage.

Knocking round in Resident Evil 7, nonetheless, was no less than higher than the bleached image that you just get with blazing Sekiro onto the wall. The darkish, foreboding hall crawling of Resi 7 truly labored out nice with the ‘detail’ setting of the Optoma’s HDR menu.

But 4K HDR isn’t why you need this projector, as a result of as quickly as you get enjoying at 1080p and 120Hz you’ll overlook every other issues. As washed out because the visuals is likely to be underneath HDR settings, the colors change into way more vibrant and clear when utilizing normal dynamic vary. The HD29H delivers a crisp picture – that may be as much as 300 inches throughout the diagonal – and is even vivid sufficient to deal with a reasonably lit room too.

In pitch black surrounds although games actually pop. The vibrant colors of Trials Rising are magnificent at such scale, and the 120Hz refresh fee implies that even at tempo it nonetheless seems to be nice. It’s the identical with Sekiro too, watching your in-game avatar repeatedly murdered due to your lack of talent has by no means appeared so good.

The distinction ranges of the HD29H are genuinely spectacular, and there may be little or no seen banding to any of the gradients both. The white saturation is critically good too, however whereas there’s a respectable unfold within the black ranges, the center tones do get slightly samey.

We know of just one different projector that may supply the Optoma HD29H some competitors and that’s the Acer Nitro G550. That too has 120Hz 1080p show capabilities, together with the identical 8.4ms enter lag, however the Optoma clearly has a superior lamp put in inside its chassis. The Acer solely has a peak luminance of two,200 lumens – in contrast with 3,400 lumens of the HD29H – and in addition has virtually half the lamp lifetime of the G550.

There are a couple of niggles with it, nonetheless. It’s not the quickest to modify between inputs, and that delay additionally happens once you’re altering decision or refresh fee in games. Sometimes it takes so lengthy you miss the affirmation menu choice and it resets earlier than you’ve got an opportunity to see what’s occurring.

That 10W built-in speaker’s additionally not a lot cop, and the HDR efficiency of the projector is fairly weak sauce too. If you have been hoping for an reasonably priced 4K HDR succesful gadget you’ll most likely be dissatisfied, however should you’re chasing tremendous easy gaming you positively gained’t be.

Where high-end 4K projectors will run to hundreds of kilos, and be totally unsuitable for an important gaming expertise, this £700 Optoma HD29H can ship all of it for a relatively low worth. Imagine how a lot you’d should spend on a low latency gaming monitor that’s 300-inches…

The solely drawback then turns into the place do you stick it? You want a big room to have the ability to get far sufficient away from the wall to make a giant picture and a spot the place ideally you may have it arrange on a regular basis.

You’re additionally most likely going to be finest suited operating it from a gaming laptop computer, as lugging your desktop round is only a ache. Though now you can get 100m HDMI 2.zero cables…

But these aren’t points for the projector, these are your issues. So recover from it, as a result of that is the very best gaming projector round proper now.