EVERY New Projector from CES 2023: 8K USTs, Lifestyle Projectors, Sub $1K 4K Gaming Projectors!?

January 10, 2023

Today on The Hook Up I’ve got all the latest projector news from CES 2023.  I’ve got footage from the show floor, invite only events and private off site suites to show you all the latest trends and upcoming projector releases from BENQ, Samsung, Hisense, Formovie, XGIMI, and more.

Starting with the biggest news from both a technological and physical standpoint: both Hisense and Samsung showed off 8k resolution Ultra Short Throw projectors, which will be the first of their kind to hit the market.

The Hisense projector will be called the 120LX and is part of the Hisense LaserTV line, which means that it will have fixed focus and will be paired with a 120 inch ambient light rejecting screen.  The press kit mentions a brightness of 400 nits, but the Hisense employee I spoke to mentioned 3500 ANSI lumens from its triple laser light source, which when paired with Dolby Vision support, produces an incredible image with black levels like I’ve never seen from a UST.  No word yet on official pricing, but release is scheduled for March or April in the Chinese market, with no official US release date yet.  The 120LX also has a slick new cover mechanism that automatically deploys to protect the lens when the projector is powered off.

The 8k offering from Samsung is the next step in their premiere line which includes the more budget friendly premiere 120 and the higher end premiere 130.  The Premiere 8k UST uses DLP technology with pixel shifting to achieve 4x the resolution of the previous 4k premiere options and can project a massive 150” screen. There were no official specs given for the Premiere 8k’s brightness, but the Samsung employee I spoke to said it was around 4000 ANSI lumens, which based on the in person demonstration wouldn’t surprise me at all since the image was crisp and bright even on a 150” screen, and didn’t significantly degrade when that same employee flipped on the house lights.  Like the Hisense, official pricing isn’t available, but the Samsung employee did say this projector was going to be aimed at the extreme enthusiast and early adopter market which probably translates into at least $10,000, and probably more like $15,000+ MSRP.

The next most expensive projector that I saw was from the camera manufacturer Leica, which has previously been associated with the budget projector brand brand JMGO.  The new Leica Cine 1 is anything but budget friendly and comes at $9,000 for the 120” screen version. The materials and design were definitely top notch and the picture looked excellent, but $9,000 for a 4K UST with around 2500 lumens is a big ask, and their big selling point of having a built in TV tuner seems a bit unnecessary in 2023.

Also in the Ultra Short Throw and laser TV category, Hisense has upgraded almost their entire line of projectors including the single laser L5, and triple laser L9 with pricing staying mostly the same, but major improvements being made in contrast ratios and black levels.  Another big shift for Hisense is the inclusion of Fresnel ambient light rejecting screens in place of lenticular screens which not only offer higher overall brightness, but also allow for USTs and laser TVs to be ceiling mounted without compromising the ambient light rejecting qualities of the screen.

AWOL Vision was also at CES, but they didn’t announce any new hardware.  Instead, they were showing off a new software package that will be available for their flagship LTV 3500, which will designate it as the LTV-3500 Pro and will add support for 24p mode and the PJLink protocol for use with home automation platforms like control4.  Owners of the LTV 3500 will be able to purchase the Pro upgrade directly from AWOL and install it over the air.  AWOL also announced that all models will receive a free over the air update with dynamic laser control which will drastically improve contrast ratios and black levels in dark scenes.

BenQ’s goal for 2023 and beyond is to move away from bulb projectors and embrace their 4 LED technology which uses separate Red Green and Blue LEDs as well as an additional Blue boost LED to not only produce great brightness and color accuracy but also deliver a 20,000+ watch hour lifespan.  BenQ’s new flagship, the HT4550i combines all the modern conveniences of a Netflix compatible android TV OS and LED light source with more traditional features like manual zoom, manual focus and lens shifting that provides around 1 foot of horizontal and vertical image adjustment without physically moving the projector.  The HT4550i will have an MRSP of $2,700, which is actually pretty competitive for a projector with its specs including 3200 ANSI lumens, 100% DCI P3 color gamut coverage, and just 17.9ms of input lag at 4K60hz making this an outstanding all around projector for movies, sports, and video games.

BenQ has also thrown their hat in the ring for the increasingly more popular lifestyle projector category.  Set to compete with projectors like the Xgimi Horizon Pro, Nebula Laser 4K, and Dangbei Mars Pro the BenQ GP500 will have an MSRP of $1,700 and combines BenQ’s standard features like their 4 LED light source technology, and pixel shifted 4K resolution, with newer features like auto 4-point keystone, screen fit, and object avoidance and 360 degree speakers, making the GP500 a great option for moving around from room to room or for less permanent home theater setups.

And it wasn’t just BenQ jumping on the new lifestyle projector trend. The Hisense C1 is a Dolby vision and Dolby Atmos certified lifestyle projector with a 1600 ANSI lumens triple laser light source and speakers by JBL, and like all the newest projectors in this category the C1 makes setup easy with automatic keystone and screen fit.

Formovie also has a new lifestyle projector called the X5 with a laser light source, 4k resolution, and premium sound by Denon.  But none of those projectors matter at all if the stats on Formovie’s V10 lifestyle projector are even remotely accurate.

Formovie claims that this new 4k projector which is roughly the size of an Amazon Echo Studio can output 2500 ANSI lumens using an LED light source while supposedly supporting HDMI 2.1, 240hz refresh rate and just 12ms of input lag.  In addition to all that, the Formovie rep that I talked with said the estimated price on the Formovie V10 would be under $1,000 when it is released in the US later this year.  To anyone familiar with the projector market, the V10’s specs seems impossible at any price, and absurd for under $1,000.

The good news is we’ll know sooner rather than later because I was actually able to order the Formovie V10 straight from China on AliExpress on January 6th for just $1,200, so be on the lookout for a video in the next couple weeks to see if the V10’s performance can actually live up to its advertised stats, which would be a huge disruption in the existing projector market.

In the portable projector market, there wasn’t too much news, but XGIMI has announced their Mogo 2 Pro which is the successor to their popular budget portable projector.  The Mogo 2 Pro is slightly larger than the previous generation, but is the first projector to feature XGIMI’s new time of flight auto keystone which unlike the offerings of every other company, doesn’t require any disruption of your watching experience and makes the image correction process look almost like magic.

There’s a good chance I’ll be covering all these new projectors except the Leica and the two 8k projectors within the next year, so make sure to get subscribed if you aren’t already and check out my projector playlist for my best projector picks for 2022.   If you enjoyed this video make sure to hit the thumbs up button and stay tuned for more mini videos about specific CES product categories, and as always thanks for watching The Hook Up.

Check out my projector reviews here:

Best Ultra Short Throw Projectors 2022: https://youtu.be/od1W43Oua4w
Best Projectors Under $100: https://youtu.be/2QOLL2TvpJ0
Best Projectors Under $300: https://youtu.be/-gWIzxVptlE
Best Portable Projectors 2022: https://youtu.be/wFcLjrGhJZA
Best Laser Projectors 2022: https://youtu.be/ZDB_dqR2EWA

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