How Bright is a 14300 Lumen Projector?
In rooms with ambient light, a high lumen count helps ensure the projected image is bright enough. This can be especially important for projectors that are used outdoors or near windows.
While the CLO spec may not be perfect, it does make an excellent point: ANSI lumens don’t take color accuracy into account.
Brightness
When buying a projector, there are several factors to consider that will determine the ideal brightness level. These include the type of content you intend to project, the room size and ambient light conditions. Also, there is the personal preference for image brightness, which can vary from person to person.
ANSI lumens measure the amount of white light a projector can produce. They are lcd 14300 lumen projector calculated by taking meter readings from a projected 100% white test pattern. A higher ANSI lumen value indicates a brighter projector. However, ANSI lumens don’t account for the losses that occur during projection or when a projector is operating in full power mode. Therefore, a projector with a lower ANSI lumen rating may still be able to deliver an excellent picture.
The CLO (color light output) spec attempts to address this issue by separating the white and color luminance values of a projector. This allows buyers to make more accurate apples-to-apples comparisons of brightness between competing projector models. Proponents of the CLO spec argue that since three-chip and single-chip projectors create white and color values differently, the traditional ANSI lumen specification utterly fails to provide buyers with an accurate apples-to-apples comparison of projector brightness when displaying full-color subject matter.
Although the ANSI lumen number on this LCD projector is slightly lower than that of the DLP model, it is still very bright. With a little calibration to reduce the blue-green bias and reduce overdriven highlights, this projector could easily compete with the DLP on image brightness.
Contrast
Contrast refers to the ratio between black and white in a display. It can be enhanced by a variety of factors, including the number and type of image pixels, the quality of the screen and light source, and how well images are calibrated. Good contrast is important for displaying accurate grayscale and deep, rich black levels. However, it is not a magic bullet that can solve all of your display problems. Other factors, such as color accuracy and resolution, are also crucial.
One of the biggest mistakes that consumers make is consuming contrast specs without understanding what they really mean. Unfortunately, most manufacturers pump up their Full On/Off contrast numbers for marketing reasons. The problem is that this spec doesn’t take the projector’s ability to dynamically alter lumen output from frame to frame into account and therefore does not tell you what kind of contrast you will see in any given video frame.
The best way to assess a projector’s contrast is to compare two units side by side. It is not uncommon to find a unit that has a lower Full On/Off contrast rating than another but looks much better due to superior brightness, contrast and color performance, or other factors that you cannot quantify with a spec sheet. It is also helpful to read reputable online reviews from knowledgeable customers and industry influencers who have a wide range of experience with the equipment.
Colors
While a high brightness is needed for quality images in a bright room, the projector should be capable of producing good color with a lower brightness. That way, the projector can use its limited power Portable Projector to produce good contrast and color saturation rather than wasting energy on trying to generate more light than is needed.
With this test image that contains a lot of pastel colors, the LCD is significantly brighter and has higher color saturation than the DLP but its color has significant inaccuracies—yellow is olive, cyan is dark green and red is a very deep plum. The DLP image is slightly dimmer but it has better contrast and neutral gray tones.
In this scene with a yellow pencil and an orange pencil the LCD is again much brighter and has greater color saturation but its colors have significant inaccuracies. The yellow pencil looks more olive and cyan is dark green. The DLP has a less saturated orange but it has substantially improved its contrast.
Most commercial/business class projectors have flaws like these in their picture controls that make them over-bright and wildly inaccurate in some areas of the image. ANSI lumen ratings only measure white brightness and do not take into account color balance or whether the projector can retain highlight detail in an image. The new CLO spec is supposed to take both of these factors into account but it is frequently misrepresented in marketing materials.
Noise
While some projectors emit some noise due to the mechanics of their cooling fans, most do not. The noise level of a projector can be a significant factor when selecting the right one for your needs, particularly if you plan to use it in a noisy environment. Modern 4K projectors are the quietest and most often produce very little or no noise at all.
However, when you maximize light output in order to get the highest lumen ratings, picture quality suffers: highlight detail goes out the window, colors become less saturated and darker than they should be, black levels are not as deep, etc. This is why many people object to the ANSI lumen and CLO spec, which doesn’t take color balance into account at all and is based on maximum light output rather than ideal calibrations.
Fortunately, this projector is calibrated for ideal contrast and color performance so that it does not blow out highlight details and looks much more neutral than the LCD model. As an example, here is a close-up of a wine glass. The LCD projector’s dimmer brownish red tone is apparent as it bleeds into the white background, but the DLP is more neutral in its rendering and maintains the highlight detail of the glass. It also renders the blueish tint of the glass correctly, which is difficult to achieve on an LCD.