The Vankyo Leisure 495W Dolby Audio Projector stands out primarily because it's cheap. When a projector lists for $299, and is selling for $180 on the manufacturer's website, you can take it as a given that it's not appropriate for a serious home theater setup. Nor can it match the image quality and brightness of the Anker Nebula Solar Portable, our top pick for mini projectors. But compared with most comparably priced competitors, it's an impressive option for casual viewing, and its sound quality is actually better than the Anker's is, as the "Dolby Audio" part of the name suggests.

Inside the Box: A 1080p LCD Chip

Like other Vankyo projectors we've reviewed, the 495W is built around a single imaging chip, but unlike many single-chip DLP projectors, it avoids the red, green, and blue flashes known as rainbow artifacts. It manages this trick by pairing a white LED light source with a 5,760-by-1,080-pixel LCD chip and adding red, green, and blue filters on individual cells in the LCD matrix. That translates to the chip delivering a full HD, 1,920-by-1,080-pixel image. Putting all three primary colors on screen at once, rather than rotating through them one at a time as with DLP projectors, eliminates any possibility of adding annoying rainbow-like flashes.

Setup is easy, thanks in part to a small size and low weight that together make the projector easy to move into place. The 495W measures 3.4 by 7 by 4.8 inches, weighs 3.1 pounds, and connects with a simple power cord, rather than needing an external power brick. You only have to position the projector, connect power and a video source, point the lens at whatever you're using for a screen, and focus. As is typical for portable models, there's no optical zoom, but the light weight makes it easy to adjust image size by moving the projector. Note that there is a mechanical horizontal keystone adjustment, but I found it impossible to keep the entire image in focus when I tried using it.

The projector offers lots of options for image sources. The rear panel offers an HDMI 1.4 port, plus two USB Type-A ports for powering streaming dongles and reading files from external drives. There's also an AV input that works along with a bundled adapter for stereo audio and composite video inputs, which lets you use legacy video sources that require RCA phono-plug connectors.

Options for wireless connections include screen mirroring for Android and iOS devices, as well as support for DLNA and Windows Cast. In my tests, connecting with a Samsung Galaxy S20 FE phone, the Android mirroring worked without problems, including for Netflix. For those mobile devices that support it, you can also mirror the device through a wired connection.

As already mentioned, the Dolby sound system delivers impressively robust audio, both for the price and for the onboard speakers' 3-watt maximum power rating. Volume was easily enough to fill a medium-size family room in my tests, and the quality was high enough that most people will have little to no need for an external sound system. If you want still-higher quality or volume, however, there's a 3.5mm stereo audio-out port available.

Testing the Vankyo Leisure 495W: Good Image Quality and Brightness

The menus for the 495W offer four color modes. Three are locked into their predefined settings. The fourth is a User mode with settings for contrast, brightness, sharpness, and color saturation (but not color hue). All four modes are similar enough that it's impossible to judge which is best, or see the result of any adjustments, because calling up the menu grays out the image, and it takes too long to return to it to make the comparison. For my official tests I stayed with Standard mode, which is the default setting.

In my tests, colors hit the right marks for saturation and brightness, as defined by a hue-saturation-brightness color model. In some of our test images, hues were a little off, but not generally by enough to notice if you don't already know what the colors should look like. Skin tones and blue skies in particular were well within the realm of realistic. And in those few cases where they were off, they were still within a range that most people would consider at least tolerable. The 495W also did a reasonably good job with contrast in brightly lit scenes in my tests. Darker scenes lost shadow detail, but I could see enough to make out what was happening. Note that there's no 3D support.

The brightness level is also good for this class of projector, although nowhere near bright enough for the 220-inch diagonal image that Vankyo claims for the maximum image size. I started out in a dark room with a 90-inch, 16:9 image on a 1.0-gain screen, which was watchable and offered nicely saturated color, but dim enough to be a little tiring on the eyes. After experimenting with different sizes, I wound up choosing a 70-inch diagonal as being comfortable for a long session, which is also what the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommends for the rated 220 ANSI lumens. The same size was watchable with lights on in a family room at night, but a little washed out.

The good news for gaming is that I measured the input lag at 26 milliseconds for 1080p, 60Hz input using a Bodnar meter, which is a short enough lag for all but the most serious gamers.

No External Speakers Required

With low cost frequently comes cut corners, which means that when you're shopping for a projector in the Vankyo Leisure 495W's price range, it's even more important than with more expensive models to focus on which features you value most. The Vankyo Leisure 470 Pro, for example, costs a little less and offers two HDMI ports, but it can't match the 495W's audio quality or brightness. Similarly, the Vankyo E30 comes with a 100-inch screen, but it can't match the 495W's image or audio quality. And our top pick in the category, the Anker Nebula Solar Portable, is much brighter, but it's also a lot more expensive, and even it can't match the 495W's robust sound system.

Besides those impressive speakers, the key strong points for the 495W are good image quality and short input lag. If any two of those three are top priorities for you in this price range, the 495W belongs on your short list. If all three are must have features, it's very likely the model you want.