I’m a huge fan of projectors. I’ve been using one as my main “TV” for 15 years. They’re not for everyone, though. Other than needing total light control in your room, the other main reason is space. You need a wall or screen, and enough distance between that and where you can put the projector. LG aims to make the latter less of an issue with the HU80KA.
Featuring a design more like a stood-up shoebox than a traditional short-throw projector, the HU80KA is a rectangular box that can be set on the floor our mounted to the ceiling. Inside is the “mirrorless I-shaped engine” which is a bit odd, considering it requires a mirror at the top to reflect on the screen, and I believe it’s DLP-based (more on that in a moment), which has thousands of mirrors.
Light output is a claimed 2500 lumens, which is solidly bright. HDR10 compatibility is nice, but like all consumer projectors right now, HDR doesn’t quite mean what it does with TVs. The brightness and contrast ratios aren’t there yet for “true” HDR, but still, it’s nice to have the compatibility.
In case you don’t want to use this as a traditional projector, i.e. one with speakers, there are two 7-watt speakers inside the HU80KA. Since there’s also LG’s WebOS built-in, all you really need to watch movies is a power plug and a wall. There’s an HDMI input of course, in case you do want to connect it to a regular system.
LG hasn’t specified what technology they’re using inside the HU80KA, but the press release has a caveat about the 4K resolution that it has “more than 8 million discrete pixels by XPR (Expanded Pixel Resolution) video processing.” XPR is Texas Instruments name for their pixel-shifting tech in certain DLP chips, so that’s probably what’s inside. Could be a coincidence, I suppose. I haven’t reviewed this latest generation of pixel-shifting DLPs, but I extensively reviewed several previous generations. Though yes, there isn’t an exact 1:1 ratio of pixels on the chip and pixels on the screen, it’s less of a factor for detail than you’d expect.
LG hasn’t announced pricing, though they refer to it as a “premium device” in the press release. I doubt that means it’s anything close to Sony’s similar-but-$50k projector. My guess? Around $2,500, but I could be WAY off in either direction.
