The above setup put all the projectors on the same level playing field, showing the exact same content on all four. His bestselling novel, Undersea, and its sequel, Undersea Atrophia, are available in paperback and as an ebook on Amazon. You'd probably have a blast clocking in a great time, but no matter how well you did, Lewis Hamilton would be able to get a better time in the same car. At this point I need to take a step back and explain something about HDR. The face-off gets narrowed down by one. Since a projector like this has no hope in creating the nits required by HDR content (see main text), it needs to re-map the image to something closer to what it can create. In the Cinema picture mode and Standard color temp mode, the HD28HDR puts out a very respectable 170 nits, about the same as the BenQ and Epson. and Why you shouldn't expect great HDR from a projector, but the short version is, budget projectors, even those as bright as the HD28HDR, aren't able to reproduce HDR like modern TVs can. The HD28HDR has a fairly muted green, and it's particularly noticeable when side-by-side with something with more accurate colors. While the 28HDR does have a slightly higher contrast ratio, it's not particularly noticeable. The Dynamic Black mode, which decreases lamp power for darker scenes, also seems to cap maximum light output by about 10%, but has a much lower black level and therefore a greater dynamic contrast ratio. This is a peculiar projector, looking quite different with HDR content than with SDR, even with the SDR settings as close to correct as possible. Fed standard SDR content, the HD28HDR's fairly average contrast ratio and colors are fine, but they don't make it stand out. Brighter colors are more saturated. One of the cheapest HDR-compatible projectors isn't quite as dynamic with standard video. Unlike most inexpensive projectors, it works with high dynamic range video. This can have its own issues as well. Why allow 4K input but only display 1080p on-screen, you might ask? That leaves us three DLP-based units. The Optoma HD28HDR gives away its claim to fame right in its pithy name: HDR. This Optoma is quite bright but its HDR compatibility doesn't make it massively better than the non-HDR competition. That said, it's not as big a difference as you'd expect. These two things mean the HD28HDR has limited placement options compared to projectors with a larger zoom range and/or lens shift, like the BenQ and Epson. The only other connection, other than the 3.5mm audio output, is USB. It's normal for a projector to measure lower than its claimed numbers. The Optoma's zoom range is very limited, even by affordable projector standards. One possible way is to just lop off all the bright detail (think textures in clouds during daylight). But standard, non-HDR video is still way more common than HDR, and with standard video the Optoma HD28HDR is fairly average. The fan speed varies with it, though this isn't as noticeable as with the HD28HDR's cheaper brother, the HD146X. Its performance lags a bit behind the BenQ, so I ended up looking at it less than the others. With SDR content, that is, the vast majority of what you'll be watching, the BenQ looks better. There are two HDMI inputs on the HD28HDR. Well, the differences are still subtle, but again, viewing them side-by-side reveals them. HDMI 2.0 is backward compatible, so your HD sources will work fine on this input. Since the projector is going to have to re-map the HDR regardless, there is no right or wrong answer here. Its contrast ratio is nearly 3 times higher than the HD28HDR, which adds a bit more depth to the image. A projector that is able to read and readjust HDR content could, in theory, look better than a projector that can't. With Thor: Ragnarok, such differences are easy to pick out, given the lavish sets and broad fantastical colors. That all said the difference is still fairly slight. With HDR content, I'd put the HD28HDR very slightly above the BenQ HT2050A, though they have very different strengths and weaknesses. You can follow his travels at BaldNomad.com. One is HDMI 1.4, which covers you for any standard HD sources, or older 4K sources up to 30 Hz, you want to connect. So I'd lean that way for most people, but the HD28HDR is a solid alternative, especially if you watch predominantly HDR content. He spends most of the year as a digital nomad, living and working while traveling around the world. The remote's backlight is brighter than some projectors I've reviewed. This is a tale of two projectors, trapped inside the same small case. When you send this projector 4K, it's identified on screen as such, but you're still only seeing HD. I think most people, viewing the images created by both on the same screen, would assume they were the same projector. Given that the BenQ is only slightly more expensive, while also being quieter, with a better zoom and as well as lens shift, it seems like a slam dunk winner over the HD28HDR. With higher-end TVs HDR makes a big difference in image quality, but with projectors it's a different story:Projectors lack the HDR-friendly hardware like OLED and full-array local dimming that can make HDR sources on TVs shine. This projector is the best among the three if you're the kind of person who watches mostly HDR -- reserving the projector for high-end games or special movie nights for example -- but the other two are superior all-around choices. Perhaps with a few settings moved one tick in one direction or another. The BenQ, with its greater zoom range and lens shift, will also fit better in far more homes than the HD28HDR. More noticeable are the BenQ's richer, more accurate colors, especially green. There is no internal speaker, however. What is a flat white on, say, the BenQ, has detail/texture and some color on the HD28HDR. You'll need to get some third-party models from Amazon. To test HDR I connected a separate streaming stick to the 28HDR and left the others connected to the same SDR source. 2022 CNET, a Red Ventures company. The BenQ does look better than both Optomas, though perhaps not as much as the numbers suggest. The Eco lamp mode drops either by about 30%. So they have to remap the HDR signal in a way so it looks acceptable, while not completely ignoring the extra HDR info. While the issue with a weak green is still there, other colors, especially brighter ones, look better and richer on the HD28HDR. For projectors of this price, this is a solid result and creates a very bright image, albeit slightly dimmer than the Epson HC2150 and BenQ HT2050A. You can read more about it in What is HDR for TVs, and why should you care? It's worth flipping through these while you're watching HDR content to see what looks best to you on that content. A potentially better way is to remap some of the bright detail so it's "dimmer" so to speak. He also the Editor-at-large for The Wirecutter. Why you shouldn't expect great HDR from a projector. Some slight adjustments to these were possible, but not to any great extent. Punching above its weight and looking quite good. In Eco mode this jumps up to an impressive 10,000 hours, though at a cost of 30% of the brightness. The HD28HDR can accept and display 4K sources but unlike the higher-end Optoma UHD60, it's not a true 4K projector. Fed HDR content, it's a different story. Their color accuracy, such as it is, is similar as well. He is NIST and ISF trained, and has a degree in Television/Radio from Ithaca College. In a typical home theater setup, where all the sources run through a receiver, there's no need to run two HDMI cables. I found the Cinema mode to be most accurate, along with the Standard color temperature and Standard (2.2) gamma settings. This is inelegant, and can create other issues. The HD28HDR provides a cheaper way to get high dynamic range since it doesn't need to use a 4K DLP chip. Optoma claims 3,600 lumens of brightness, and I measured around 1,500. Turning up the Brilliant Color, or switching to the Vivid mode, can increase this even more, to 215 nits, though the overall image doesn't look as good or as accurate. Colors are another story. I think you can see where I'm going with this. He has written for Sound&Vision magazine, Home Theater magazine, and was the Editor in Chief of Home Entertainment magazine. Conveniently, Optoma gives you a choice in how it does this: Standard, Film, Bright and Details. Read more: TV resolution confusion: 1080p, 2K, UHD, 4K, 8K, and what they all mean. Once sent an HDR signal, the projector switches over to its HDR picture mode, giving access to a new setting in the menu: Dynamic Range. Turning on the Dynamic Black feature expands this all the way to 15,000 hours, or about 10 years at 4 hours a day. The LCD-based Epson is around 1,200:1, and the BenQ nearly 2,100:1. The Epson is a good projector, especially for viewers who can't stand DLP's rainbow effect. In this mode the lamp brightness decreases with dark scenes. Think of it like a professional driver going around a racetrack in your car. The brightness, dynamic range, and colors of the projector haven't changed, it's how the content is able to better use that same performance. It looks a little less washed out. As is common with DLP projectors in this price range, there is no lens shift. Featuring a design shared across multiple Optoma projectors, there are input buttons here that aren't found on the HD28HDR itself. While the HD28HDR can't do nearly as much with HDR content as a more capable projector, it's not doing nothing, so to speak. This setup let me play the HDR version of a movie on the 28HDR and the SDR version on the other projectors. If you're still into 3D, that's here too, though no glasses are for sale on Optoma's site. On the BenQ,The Incredible Hulk looks a bit more incredible, if you will. They have neither the light output, the dynamic range, nor the colors for wide color gamut content. Both are close in price and in many ways close in performance, but with HDR sources the Optoma HD28HDR does look slightly better than either one. The casing is glossy black instead of glossy white, but is clearly the same design otherwise. The color temperature is slightly lacking blue, with slightly too much green, but it's reasonably close. When viewing standard HD video, aka not HDR, I saw very little difference between the HD28HDR and the HD146X. The other is HDMI 2.0 and can handle 4K sources. While the black bars above and below the screen reveal that the BenQ has a much lower black level, and by extension, a better contrast ratio, the image itself looks far more similar than you'd expect. As usual, I connected these projectors to a Monoprice 1x4 distribution amplifier that gave each one the same source, and then compared everything on a 102-inch 1.0-gain screen. This will power a streaming stick like a Roku or Amazon Fire. Not a huge amount, but enough. The native contrast ratio itself is fairly poor, at an average of 716:1. With no other changes other than an HDR version of the signal, the HD28HDR looks noticeably better than the HD146X, and ends up giving the BenQ a run for its money. Lamp life, in the Normal mode, is a claimed 6,000 hours. One of the HD28HDR's HDMI inputs is HDMI 2.0and can accept a 3,840x2,160 60Hz (4K) signal, but the most that is ever displayed on screen is 1,920x1,080 (1080p). It won't look as good as a TV that has actual HDR-friendly performance but feeding it "better" content could nonetheless result in a more compelling image. All rights reserved. What is HDR for TVs, and why should you care? Green is quite undersaturated, and blue is slightly teal. The BenQ is one of the few sub-$1,000 DLP projectors that does, while the Epson, an LCD projector, does as well. There is more detail in bright objects, like clouds. The Epson, meanwhile scored the same in image quality as the HD28HDR but for different reasons. Geoffrey Morrison is a writer/photographer for CNET, Forbes, and The New York Times.