$100-$500 Budget Home Theater Projectors Tested (2025 edition)

Back in November I bought and tested 25 projectors with price tags under $100 and found some pretty good options if your budget is tight. But if you want a lot more performance for a little more money, this video is for you. I’ve got 20 new projectors priced between $100 and $600, and I’m going to test their brightness, contrast, focus, color space coverage, and power draw. Then we’ll put them side by side in a picture quality test, and last, I’ll do more in depth smart OS, input lag, speaker quality, and fan noise testing to make sure you get the best projector and most for your money in 2025. As always there are no sponsored reviews on this channel.

Brightness Testing

Starting out with brightness testing, in this price range it’s more common for projectors to list their brightness in ANSI lumens which is the industry standard, but that doesn’t mean they’re telling the truth. I tested each of the 20 projectors using the ANSI standard where you take nine individual brightness readings and multiply the average brightness by the screen size in square meters to get the ANSI lumens. The brightest projector in the video was the Wemax Vogue with 1404 ANSI lumens on its less color accurate Bright mode, and a still respectable 1142 lumens on Movie mode. The Yaber K3 was the only other projector to measure over 1000 ANSI lumens, coming in at 1078 on its brightest mode, and while they may not have been the brightest, I think these six projectors also deserve recognition for measuring within 95% or more of their advertised lumens. I’d also like to point out that Ultimea, AuKing, VOPLLS and ONOAYO measured less than 50% of their advertised lumens, so shame on them.

Contrast Testing

I also measured each projector’s contrast by dividing the brightness of a pure white screen by the brightness of a pure black screen and found that, as usual these single LCD style projectors had excellent contrast ratios with the Yaber K3 on top with over 4000:1 native contrast. But the top five were all over 2800:1 native contrast which competes with projectors all the way up into the $5000 range. You can see that, as expected, the two DLP projectors in this video, the XGIMI Elfin Flip and Wemax Vogue both had comparatively terrible contrast ratios under 500:1.

Brightness Uniformity

However, DLP has some major advantages over single LCD, starting with brightness uniformity which is calculated by dividing the dimmest of the nine ANSI measurements by the brightest. As expected, the Elfin came out on top with 88% uniformity, followed by the Wemax with 80%.

Focus Uniformity

DLP also tends to have much better focus uniformity and to test that I started by projecting this image and pulling clear focus on the center of the screen. Then I inspected the text in all four corners and rated their quality from 1-10.

As expected, the XGIMI Elfin Flip and Wemax Vogue had excellent corner focus, even though the Elfin had a bit of screen door effect, and the Vogue looked like it lost some pixels to its image processing.

The best focus from a single LCD projector was from the Dangbei N2, but the Alvar and Nexigo PJ40 Ultra were also pretty good, scoring 8 out of 10 points.

The two worst performers in terms of focus were the Magcubic HY450 which had a lot of ghosting near the edges of the screen due to its short throw, and the Aurzen Boom Mini which had all four corners completely out of focus whenever the center focus was dialed in.

Color Space Coverage

DLP also has much better color reproduction. I measured each projector’s ability to produce all the colors in the Rec 709 SDR color space and found that both DLP projectors covered over 95% of Rec 709 while the single LCD projectors struggled, covering between just 50% and 80%, which may cause them to look comparatively washed out and dull.

Head-to-Head Testing

But there’s only one way to know for sure, so I set up two 100” screens and put the projectors head-to-head going from least expensive to most.

For round 1, I put the brightest projector from my Sub $100 video, the Groview JQ818C on the left and the Aurzen EAZZE D1 on the right. This round was not particularly close with the Groview having twice the brightness, better focus, and 10 times the contrast of the Aurzen, so it easily moved on.

Then in round 2, the Groview JQ818C was on the left and Magcubic HY450 was on the right. This was much closer than round 1, but the HY450 was too green and oversaturated. In these side-by-side tests I always try to adjust picture options to give each projector the best chance, but this HY450 didn’t have any picture options at all, so I was kind of forced to move the Groview on due to the inaccurate colors on the HY450.

So that meant round 3 was the Groview JQ818C on the left and the Aurzen EAZZE D1 Pro on the right. The extra 100 lumens on the D1 Pro over the standard D1 did make a difference, but due to the lack of contrast this round was never really close and the Groview easily won the matchup.

Round 4 put the Groview JQ818C on the left and the VOPLLS M10 on the right. The picture on the VOPLLS looked completely yellow and gross, like it had been in a house full of smoke for the last five years and combined with some poor image processing in dark scenes, the VOPLLS didn’t stand a chance.

For round 5, the Groview JQ818C was on the left and the AuKing H10 on the right. This round was very close, and I thought the Groview did a slightly better job in the very darkest scenes, but the color temperature, white balance, and saturation were better on the AuKing. So, even though the AuKing’s image was far from perfect, I thought it was good enough to move on to the next round.

That meant that round 6 was the Ultimea Apollo on the left and the AuKing H10 on the right. The Ultimea was really red and oversaturated by default, but I was able to adjust its picture options to get it a bit more in line which helped it perform better in bright scenes, and slightly better tone mapping and contrast helped in dark scenes, meaning the Ultimea took this round.

Round 7 was the Ultimea Apollo on the left and the Alvar F505 on the right. This was the first round that I thought there was a massive upgrade over the $99 Groview JQ818C, and not only did the Alvar have excellent color, but it was also twice as bright with much better contrast. However, I did have to increase the brightness all the way to 59 to stop it from crushing shadow detail in dark scenes, which caused it to be a little washed out in bright scenes, but it still easily won this round.

Round 8 then put the Nexigo PJ40 on the left, which has been my baseline recommendation for anyone looking for a sub $300 projector for the last two years, and the Alvar F505 on the right. In bright scenes the PJ40 was a little too red and very slightly oversaturated, but the biggest difference was in dark scenes where the Alvar’s tone mapping and image processing made the PJ40’s image look a bit flat and lacking in shadow depth. So, surprisingly the Alvar took down my baseline recommendation and moved on again.

Making round 9 the Elephas W1K on the left and the Alvar F505 on the right. After switching the Elephas into User mode it was almost perfect in terms of brightness, contrast, and white balance even without making any adjustments. I thought that both of these projectors looked incredibly good in bright scenes with my only nitpick being that the Alvar maybe looked a bit too red and the Elephas looked ever so slightly too green, and in dark scenes they were also very close. But the Elephas had slightly higher peak brightness in the highlights while maintaining a very impressive black floor, and I definitely thought it earned the win in this very close round.

Round 10 then put the Elephas W1K on the left and the Dangbei N2 on the right. The Dangbei was another surprisingly strong performer with good color accuracy and saturation, and it even held up in the brightest scenes despite having 300 less lumens than the Elephas. But the big difference was in dark scenes where the Elephas had more headroom for highlights which gave it a lot more pop and shadow depth, meaning the Elephas took this round also, but the Dangbei did look pretty good.

In round 11, the Elephas W1K was on the left and the Happrun JQ820 was on the right. I think the Happrun had all the right specs to win this round, but I couldn’t get it to stop crushing shadow detail, and anytime I raised the brightness to get it to more accurately display darker areas like Dani’s hair and Henry’s shirt in bright scenes, it would also raise the black floor in darker scenes making the entire image look comparatively washed out, so the Elephas moved on again.

Round 12 then put the Elephas W1K on the left and the Happrun 510G on the right. I don’t really understand this projector. Happrun basically took the $50 Happrun H1, which is a great value for the money and stuck a Google TV streaming stick in it and raised the price by over $200, but it’s just not competitive at that price point and the Elephas frankly embarrassed the 510G in this round.

Similarly in round 13, it was the Elephas W1K on the left and the Nexigo PJ40 Ultra on the right. Like the last round, the PJ40 Ultra takes the very capable PJ40 and adds a SmartOS, this time for an increase of around $40. But I found that the picture options on the PJ40 Ultra were not as good as the original PJ40 and like the Happrun JQ820, I couldn’t find a combination of brightness and contrast that would preserve shadow detail in bright scenes without raising the black floor in dark scenes. Watching it back on video, the PJ40 Ultra looks better than it did in person and despite my best efforts to adjust picture options I thought the Elephas W1K looked significantly better overall, at least in person.

In round 14, the Elephas W1K was on the left and the XGIMI Elfin Flip was on the right. This didn’t feel like a fair fight since the Elephas was twice as bright with 10 times the contrast, but the color on the XGIMI was extremely good. You can see some deep reds in Dani’s sweater that the XGIMI’s DLP chip is able to display that the single LCD on the W1K just can’t. Still, in dark scenes it was absolutely no contest and the Elfin’s black floor was way too high to compete, so the Elephas moved on again.

Round 15 was the Elephas W1K on the left and the ViewSonic LX60HD on the right, and there’s no nice way to say this, the ViewSonic is just terrible. It had poor color accuracy, bad tone mapping, and a 500:1 contrast ratio that made it nowhere near the quality of the Elephas, which easily won this round.

In round 16, the Elephas W1K was on the left again and the ONOAYO ONO3 was on the right. They have identical operating systems and picture options, but the Elephas is over twice as bright with twice the contrast, so there wasn’t much to see in this round either and the Elephas easily moved on again.

Round 17 put the Elephas W1K on the left and the Aurzen Boom Mini on the right. As I mentioned earlier, the Boom Mini’s focus was just not good, and in addition to being dimmer and a bit more red shifted than the Elephas, the Boom Mini was visibly blurry, even without text on the screen. In the darkest scenes there were diagonal blue streaks running across the entire image, so this round was another easy win for the Elephas.

Round 18 was the Elephas W1K on the left and the Wemax Vogue on the right. When I was buying projectors for this video, I thought the Wemax Vogue was going to absolutely dominate everything else in the video because a DLP projector with a bright 4LED light source for $423 is an insane deal. To be fair, the color and brightness on the Wemax was top tier, but contrast is so important and the Elephas has an over 6 times higher contrast ratio and the black levels of the Wemax were extremely gray and washed out in comparison, so the Elephas ended up taking this round too.

So round 19 put the Elephas W1K on the left, and the most expensive projector from this year, the $499 Yaber K3 on the right. Like the Happrun JQ820 and the Nexigo PJ40 Ultra, I just couldn’t stop the Yaber from absolutely crushing shadows, and there was zero detail in Henry’s shirt or Dani’s hair, even after raising the brightness to 60, which then completely ruined the dark scene picture quality. Overall, I have to say this was a pretty disappointing performance from a projector with such impressive stats on paper, but it just shows how important image processing is.

Last, in the final round I put the Elephas W1K on the left and the winner from last year’s picture quality testing, the $599 Paris Rhone 4K, on the right. The increased resolution and top notch focus of the native 4K screen on the Paris Rhone were noticeable, but I thought the tone mapping and preservation of shadow detail on the Elephas were a significant upgrade and well worth the tradeoff of having 1080p resolution instead of 4K.

That means that the Elephas W1K won 12 rounds straight to take the overall top spot for 2025 viewing experience, but I do think that the Alvar F505 and Nexigo PJ40 were pretty close behind with the Wemax Vogue in 4^th place, and here are the rest of the viewing experience rankings for this year’s projectors.

Throw Ratio

Overall viewing experience is obviously very important, but there are quite a few other differences between these projectors that might make it worth it to accept slightly lower image quality in return for something that works better in your space. Starting with throw ratio, which is how far away from the screen the projector needs to be to make a specific sized image. Here are the distances required for a 100” diagonal screen and their resulting throw ratios. You can see that the PJ40 has a pretty long throw, while the Elephas and Wemax are on the shorter side of what we consider standard throw, and the Magcubic HY450 would qualify as a short throw projector with a throw ratio of 0.64, projecting a 100” screen from less than 5 ft away. 

Lens Offset

Another interesting throw characteristic is that DLP projectors normally have the bottom of the screen lined up with the bottom of the lens, which is sometimes called 100% offset, while most single LCD projectors have the center of the lens aligned with the center of the screen, which is 0% offset. In this video, the DLP projectors from XGIMI and Wemax both have that typical 100% offset and almost all of the LCD projectors have 0%, except the Magcubic HY450 which is very close to 100% offset, similar to a DLP projector, which I think makes placement much easier than with the typical 0% offset single LCD projector, which have to be mounted in the exact middle of the screen.

Smart Features

Another big difference in this price category is how many smart features are included with the projector, which I’m going to define as automatic or manual four point digital keystone, motorized and/or auto focus, and a SmartOS that includes streaming apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.

Starting with four point keystone, when looking at projectors under $100, it’s a pretty rare feature, but in this $100-500 price category, all the projectors have that feature in one way or another. But it’s important to note that DLP projectors like the XGIMI Elfin and Wemax Vogue will maintain much better focus uniformity than single LCD projectors when they’re not aligned perfectly with the screen.

Second, motorized focus is handy because you can stand right next to the screen to get the focus dialed in perfectly from the remote, and all the projectors except the Nexigo PJ40, PJ40 Ultra, and Happrun 510G have motorized focus and most have some form of camera based automatic focusing. But in my experience, you can usually get a better result by turning off the auto focus setting and dialing in the focus yourself.

Last, the majority of the projectors in this video are using a more budget friendly SmartOS that has the NetRange app store, which is fine if all you need is YouTube, TikTok, Netflix, and Prime Video. But for things like Disney and Hulu you’ll have to use the web-based mouse mode versions or get an external streaming stick. The XGIMI Elfin Flip has almost identical compatibility to NetRange with what they call XGIMI OS and the XGIMI App store, but it does add free streaming TV channels called XGIMI TV which is similar to what Samsung has on TizenOS. The Magcubic HY450 I’m testing has an older version of Android, which doesn’t have great app compatibility and probably wouldn’t be something you’d want to use as your only streaming option, and the Wemax has FengOS and Aptoid, which again, are not particularly useful since the apps you can install are old and generally unsupported.

Pretty much the only operating system that gives you full compatibility is GoogleTV on the Yaber K3, ViewSonic LX60HD, Aurzen Boom Mini, and Happrun 510G. But none of those projectors performed particularly well in the side-by-side testing and in my opinion are all much more expensive than their performance justifies, so it’s possible GoogleTV certification just costs too much to make it worth it at this price point.

The big question for me is, other than the XGIMI Elfin Flip that is specifically designed for portability, why would you ever want a half-baked, built-in operating system that adds $50-100 to the price of the projector instead of just using a Roku or Firestick that costs $20-30 and has full compatibility and support for all streaming apps?

Input Lag

The other downside of having a SmartOS is that it tends to increase input lag, which is bad for gaming on your projector. In general, input lag numbers under 20 ms are very good for gaming, between 20 ms and 50 ms is acceptable but not great, and anything above 100 ms just won’t work for gaming because the delay between pressing a button on your controller and seeing the action on screen will be too large.

I was surprised and disappointed to see that when measured with the Leo Bodnar lag tester, even in their game specific modes, only four projectors had input lag numbers under 50 ms, and only the Nexigo PJ40 was under 20 ms, though the XGIMI Elfin Flip was also close, and even though the Elephas was technically under 50 ms, it’s still more input lag than I’d prefer.

At this point I think I’ve got enough data to narrow things down a little bit and make some recommendations, and I’m going to use fan noise, speaker quality, and power draw as the tie breakers.

Best All-In-One Projector

If you’re looking for an all-in-one smart projector with a built-in operating system and good picture quality, I think the three top choices are the Elephas W1K, the Alvar F505, and the Dangbei N2.

Of those three, the Elephas W1K is definitely the most well-rounded, finishing first in the viewing experience testing due to its great tone mapping and image processing combined with its 735 ANSI lumens and 2883:1 contrast ratio. The Elephas also has a very tolerable fan noise at 42.6 decibels and the built-in speakers are not the highest quality but are plenty loud and it would be acceptable for most people to watch an entire movie. The Elephas also had the lowest input lag of these three projectors, but it was still close to 50 ms, which isn’t ideal. The Elephas also had higher than normal power use, drawing 153.2 watts while outputting 735 ANSI lumens for an efficiency of 4.8 lumens per watt.

If you’re looking for something a bit smaller and quieter, the Dangbei N2 finished fifth in viewing experience despite having a much lower brightness at just 419 ANSI lumens and a 1980:1 contrast ratio, and the N2 had the quietest fan of any projector in the video at just 34.8 decibels. For speaker quality, it didn’t have the same peak volume as the Elephas, but the speakers were higher quality with more low end and would be more than sufficient for a movie night. In my testing, the Dangbei N2 drew 98 watts but only output 419 lumens, meaning it is actually the least efficient of these three at 4.28 lumens per watt, and it also had the worst input lag at 98.9 ms.

The Alvar F505 finished second in viewing experience and had very similar raw brightness and contrast numbers to the Elephas at 724 ANSI lumens and 2841:1 contrast ratio, but the F505 had a significantly louder fan at 48.2 decibels and though it did have slightly more balanced sound with more bass, the speakers were overall quieter than the Elephas. The Alvar also had nearly double the input lag at 82.5 ms, so even though it was more efficient, drawing just 123.6 watts with an efficiency of 5.86 lumens per watt, I wouldn’t recommend picking the Alvar over the Elephas.

Best “Dumb” Projector

However, all three of those projectors use the NetRange store and operating system, which other than full Netflix support leaves a lot to be desired. I want to make another argument for just getting a projector with no smart OS and adding a FireTV stick or Roku for streaming. The Nexigo PJ40 Gen 3 finished third overall for viewing experience with 692 ANSI lumens and 3173:1 contrast ratio, and importantly if you want to play video games, it also has a game mode with less than 20ms of input lag. The PJ40 has an adjustable fan, which is admittedly very loud at max brightness measuring in at close to 49 decibels, but the fan can be adjusted down along with the maximum brightness of the light source, and it can get all the way down to 34.7 decibels if that’s what you’re going for. At maximum brightness, the PJ40 draws 150.5 watts to output 692 lumens for an efficiency of 4.6 lumens per watt, which is slightly lower than the Elephas, and in addition to not having a SmartOS, the PJ40 also lacks motorized focus, and doesn’t have a Bluetooth remote. But combined with a streaming stick it’s the only projector in the video that would check all of my boxes in terms of image quality, input lag, and focus uniformity.

Highest Value Projector

If contrast isn’t your end-all be-all stat, I feel 100% confident saying that the Wemax Vogue is WAY more projector than you would typically be able to get for your money. A DLP projector with a 4LED light source putting out 1404 measured ANSI lumens for $423 new just doesn’t line up with the rest of the market, and similar projectors from Dangbei and XGIMI are in the $700-800 range. In addition to the more robust DLP projection system, the Wemax’s built-in speakers were also in a completely different league with loud, balanced, full range stereo sound. The Wemax also has the advantage of projecting with 100% offset, which means it’s easier to mount on the ceiling or project from a table, and if you do need to position it to the side of your screen, the DLP projection system maintains better focus uniformity when using keystone. It also had a fan noise of just 37.4 decibels when outputting its full 1404 lumens and it drew just 152.3 watts for an efficiency of 9.2 lumens per watt, by far the highest in the video. If the Vogue had decent input lag it would be the easiest recommendation I’ve ever made, but at 53.3 ms it’s not quite as tempting since it’s not great for gaming.

Best Short Throw Projector

Last, an honorable mention has to go to the Magcubic HY450 for doing something completely different.  I love the short throw and 100% offset and I think it would make a great projector for someone looking to build a budget golf simulator and would be perfect for doing projection holiday decorations. At $139, it’s the most lumens per dollar of any of the projectors in the video, but I think I’d recommend paying the extra $10 to get the NetRange version of the projector instead of the Android version like I tested. Be aware that it does have a decently loud fan at 47.2 decibels and the speakers are usable, but definitely not great.

As always, there are no sponsored reviews on this channel, but I do have links below for all of the projectors in this video, and as always, I appreciate when you use those links since as an Amazon Affiliate I do earn a small commission on the sale at no cost to you.

I’d also like to thank all my patrons over at Patreon for their continued support of my channel, and if you’re interested in supporting my channel please check out the links below. If you enjoyed this video, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel and as always, thanks for watching The Hook Up.