If you're looking for a 1080p home entertainment projector, the Optoma HD141X ($599) is a potentially attractive choice. In addition to full HD 1080p resolution, it offers 3D support for video sources like Blu-ray players and cable or FiOS boxes, an audio system comparable to that on a typical TV, and two HDMI ports, so you can easily connect it to, say, a cable box and Blu-ray player to switch between them easily in a permanent installation. It can, in short, serve nicely to supplement, or even replace, the TV in your family room.

The HD141X shares many of its key features with the BenQ HT1075 ($892.60 at Amazon) that I recently reviewed. Both are DLP-based, for example, and both offer two HDMI ports, one of which is Mobile High-Definition Link (MHL) enabled. The MHL support lets you take advantage of possibilities like connecting a Roku Stick for streaming TV.

Both are also definitively home entertainment projectors. That means, in part, that they're designed to be bright enough so you can use them with the ambient light in a typical living room or family room. One of the key differences between them is that the HD141X offers an even higher brightness rating than the BenQ model, at 3,000 lumens.

Home-Entertainment Brightness and Sound

Using the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations for theater-dark lighting, and assuming a 1.0 gain screen, 3,000 lumens would be bright enough at 1080p's 16:9 aspect ratio for a screen size of roughly 215 to 290 inches, measured diagonally. Even with moderate ambient light, it's bright enough for a roughly 140- to 160-inch image size, which is still enormous for home entertainment use.

For smaller screen sizes or dimmer lighting, you can lower the brightness by switching to Eco mode or a lower-brightness predefined mode, which you might want to do in any case to get the best color quality.

The HD141X, like most DLP projectors, has lower color brightness than white brightness. I measured it at about 22 percent of the white brightness with the brightest predefined mode and at about 80 percent of the white brightness in Cinema mode. So its actual brightness for full-color images is lower than the rating suggests. (For more on color brightness, see Color Brightness: What It Is, Why It Matters.) As a reality check, I found it suitably bright in my tests for a 92-inch image in a family room at night, with the lights on.

Also adding to the HD141X's capabilities as a home entertainment projector is its sound system. The 10-watt mono speaker delivering good sound quality and enough volume to fill any reasonably sized family room. If you want stereo or would simply rather use an external sound system, you can plug it into the projector's mini jack stereo output.

Basics and Setup

As with most home entertainment projectors, the HD141X is smaller and lighter than typical home theater projectors, at just 4 by 12.4 by 8.8 inches (HWD) and weighing 5 pounds 8 ounces. If you don't have a place to set it up permanently, it's easy to store away when you're not using it.

Setup is standard, with a manual focus and manual 1.1x zoom. Connectors for image input are on the side and limited to the two HDMI ports, with the MHL-enabled HDMI port making it easy to connect a compatible phone or tablet.

Both HMDI ports offer full support for 3D from video sources like a Blu-ray player or a cable or FiOS box. The 3D function will work with either DLP-Link or Vesa RF glasses, but not with both at once. Optoma doesn't include any of either kind with the projector.

Performance
Image quality on my tests was good to near-excellent in most ways, with one notable exception. When I connected the projector to a FiOS box and used the Bright predefined mode, both live and recorded digital video showed a high degree of posterization (shading changing suddenly where it should change gradually), particularly with skin tones in close-ups of faces.

Oddly, the same problem doesn't show up with material that was originally recorded on film. More importantly, it also goes away even with live and recorded digital video when you switch to Cinema mode. That makes it only a minor problem. However, it also means that when watching live or recorded digital video, you may be limited to the lower brightness modes, which may in turn limit the size of the image you can use with any given level of lighting.

Aside from the posterization under these specific conditions, the image quality is more than acceptable, with the projector doing a good job with skin tones and shadow detail (details based on shading in dark areas). I saw some minor judder (the jerkiness in movement inherent in movies filmed at 24 frames per second), but not enough to be a problem.

I also saw some rainbow artifacts (flashes of red, green, and blue), which is typical of most DLP projectors. However, I didn't see them often enough to consider them annoying except in one black and white clip. If you don't see these artifacts easily, you might not see any. Even if you're sensitive to them, it's still unlikely that you'll find them bothersome unless you plan to watch black and white movies.

Image quality for 3D is essentially the same as for 2D for those aspects of quality that both modes share. In addition, I didn't see any crosstalk, and saw only a hint of 3D-related motion artifacts.

I measured the HD141X lag time at just 33 milliseconds in Game mode and 33.8 milliseconds in Cinema mode using the Leo Bodnar Video Input Lag Tester. That works out to a two-frame lag at 60 frames per second, which is better than most projectors can manage.

If you want a projector that absolutely can't show rainbow artifacts, consider a three-chip LCD model like the Editors' Choice Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 2030 ($895.00 at Amazon) . And if you need a projector for a small room, you might prefer one like the BenQ W1080ST, which has a short-throw lens that can throw a big image from close to the screen. If you don't see rainbow artifacts easily, however—or don't find them bothersome—and you don't need a short throw, the Optoma HD141X offers a suitably bright, acceptably high-quality image at an attractive price.

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Further Reading

• How We Test Projectors
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• Hands On With Sony's Xperia Projector Prototype
• Hands On With ZTE's SPro2 Smart Projector