Lasers are in the LG HU810PW. There are two! I won’t listen to anyone say that lasers aren’t cool. In this case, two lasers and a green phosphor help the 810P’s 4K DLP chip make colours that look amazingly like real life. The 4K DLP chip also makes the image very sharp. The 810P isn’t as good as the best home theatre projectors because the contrast ratio isn’t great because of the DLP chip.
In the last two years, the price of laser technology in commercial projectors has dropped so much that traditional lamp-based models are now only used in the most cost-sensitive places. Still, laser hasn’t caught on as quickly in the performance-focused home theatre market. Laser projectors have been an option on Sony’s top-of-the-line models for a few years now, but it wasn’t until the latest crop of UST living room projectors that laser started to be used in a meaningful way on consumer projectors at lower price points.
Specifications
- Processor Quad-Core, DLP XPR chip
- Light source Dual Laser (Blue and red)
- Brightness 2700 lumens
- Resolution 4K UHD (3840 x 2160)
- Aspect ratio 16:9/Original/Full Wide/4:3/Vertical Zoom
- Screen size 40-inch to 300inch
- Projection Image (lens to wall): 150-inch at 4.3 – 6.9m; 100-inch at 2.9-4.6m
- Lens shift ± 60% vertical, ± 24% horizontal
- HDR HDR 10, Dynamic Tone Mapping, HLG, HGiG
- Casting Screen Share with MiraCast, Airplay 2
- Inputs HDMI x 3 (1 eARC), USB x 2
- 3D built-in? No
- Light source Life in high brightness 20,000 Hrs
- Sound output 5W + 5W speakers, eARC, SPDIF, Bluetooth
- Fan Noise (bright) 28dB
- Dimensions (hwd) 145 x 337 x 410 mm
- Weight 11kg
Where to get LG HU810PW?
The HU810PW is made for direct-to-consumer sales and comes in white, while the AU810PB, which was given to us for this review, is made for custom installation and professional integrators. Only the AU810PB is WiSA-ready. Like with compatible LG TVs, plugging a third-party WiSA transmitter into one of the projector’s USB ports lets it send up to 5.1-channel audio wirelessly to compatible powered speakers using the high-resolution WiSA standard. It also adds an auto-calibration feature that works with some versions of the popular Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. This is similar to what LG’s better flat-panel TVs offer.
The AU810PB also has an RS-232C port, a 12V trigger jack, and an RJ45 wired network connection that can be used for IP control. It also has a two-year warranty on parts and labour, while the HU810PW only has a one-year warranty. We put our review under the HU810PW banner because we think most readers are interested in this cheaper model.
The HU810 is rated at 2,700 ANSI lumens and has full 3840×2160 UHD resolution thanks to TI’s popular 0.47-inch DLP XPR chip. This chip takes a native 1920×1080 digital micromirror device and uses super-fast, four-phase pixel-shifting to show all 8 million pixels of a UHD signal in the time it takes to show a single frame of video. The LG HU85LA UST projector uses a red laser and two blue lasers, one of which has a filter on it, to make the red, green, and blue primary colours. The HU810, on the other hand, uses a red laser, a blue laser, and a phosphor wheel to make the same colours.