Due to the Google TV OS, the Luma 500’s menu choices are extra in step with mini projectors than with most palmtops, leading to a richer, extra helpful set of image-quality settings than you may discover in its closest competitors. For SDR enter, you possibly can select from 5 predefined image modes. Most lack any settings changes. Nevertheless, Customized mode permits you to change distinction, saturation, sharpness, shade temperature, and gamma. Lacking from that checklist is a conventional brightness adjustment for adjusting black degree, which is sadly turning into widespread on many projectors.
On our customary PowerPoint take a look at photographs, all 5 modes, together with Customized with default settings, delivered suitably impartial shade for graphics. In addition they dealt with photographs fairly effectively, though Vivid mode delivered barely extra reasonable hues than the opposite selections.
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(Credit score: M. David Stone)
For our SDR viewing exams with films, colours had been barely desaturated throughout all modes, which made Customized, with its Saturation management, my most well-liked selection. Boosting the setting introduced colours right into a extra realistic-looking vary. Shade accuracy was nonetheless off by sufficient for somebody with a essential eye to note, however at a degree that few, if any, will discover bothersome. Distinction, black degree, and sense of three dimensionality in darkish scenes had been equally within the vary of fairly good, which is definitely excessive reward for a palmtop. Even shadow element held effectively. Some minor element within the darkest areas of our take a look at clips did not present, however I had no bother making out what was taking place in these scenes.
Outcomes for a similar scenes performed from 4K HDR10 variations of the identical films had been comparable in most methods. The entries on the image mode menu switched to variations that added “HDR” to the names, together with an HDR-Customized mode as the one one which allowed modifications.
(Credit score: M. David Stone)
Right here once more, colours had been desaturated utilizing the default settings, and I improved them by elevating the Saturation setting. I additionally switched the Gamma setting from the default Regular to Shiny to brighten up the picture total. Nevertheless, even with the adjusted Gamma, the picture was considerably dimmer than with SDR enter, forcing me to maneuver the projector nearer to the display screen to get a brighter, however smaller, image. After my changes, HDR picture high quality was just like SDR, aside from a considerably larger lack of shadow element, making it exhausting to make out what was taking place in darkish scenes.
The excellent news for HDR viewing is that almost all films have few or no darkish scenes the place poor shadow element is an issue, nevertheless it’s nonetheless finest to stay with SDR enter if you happen to can. Very a lot on the plus facet, I did not see many rainbow artifacts (crimson/inexperienced/blue flashes that DLP projectors have a tendency to indicate) in any of the viewing exams. As all the time, understand that some folks see these flashes extra simply than others. In case you’re involved with the difficulty, remember to purchase from a seller that permits straightforward returns.
(Credit score: M. David Stone)
One plus for avid gamers is a brief sufficient enter lag for all however essentially the most severe gaming. I measured it with my Bodnar 4K Lag Tester at 21.7ms for 1080p/60Hz enter. As anticipated for projectors at this brightness degree, there isn’t any 3D assist.
Picture brightness in my exams was roughly what I anticipated from Kodak’s 150 ANSI lumen ranking—a decent degree for a palmtop. Utilizing Society for Movement Image and Tv Engineers (SMPTE) suggestions for a darkish room, 150 lumens is sufficient to gentle up a 47-to-64-inch diagonal, 16:9, 1.0-gain display screen. For my SDR exams, I settled on a 56-inch picture. For the dimmer total picture with HDR, I dropped the scale to a smaller, brighter 42 inches.
