Group test: Projectors under £1,000

If you thought having a proper home cinema projection system in your house was nothing but an unaffordable dream, we're about to prove that you need to think again. For we've been keeping a keen eye on the projector world until the current frenzy of price cutting there allowed us to bring you this - a group test of four projectors all costing less than £1,000.

And these are no lame multimedia-style projectors, either. All four of them have been designed from the ground up for movie viewing as opposed to more generic multimedia use. So without further ado, let's get a few Blu-rays stacked up and get into finding out just what sort of big-screen thrills £1,000 can really get you.

Overview Price comparison: Acer H5350 Price: £589 More info: Acer Size: 267(w) x 80(h) x 187(d)mm Weight: 2.3kg Native aspect ratio: 16:9 Claimed max contrast ratio: 2000:1 Claimed max brightness: 2000ANSI Lumens Connections: Analog RGB/Component Video (D-sub) x 1, Composite Video (RCA) x 1, S‐Video (Mini DIN) x1, Component (3 RCA) x 1, HDMI (Video, HDCP) x 1, PC Audio (Stereo mini jack) x 1, USB (Type B) x 1 Acer H5350 The Acer brand is usually associated with PC products. But the H5350 is most definitely designed as a home cinema machine - even though it sells for the princely sum of just £589. Yes, that's £589! Inevitably for such an astonishingly cheap device, the H5350 is not a full HD projector. But it is still HD Ready, with a pixel count of 1280x720 using film-friendly DLP technology. Other specifications look respectable, too. The quoted maximum brightness in particular is unbelievably high for this money, at 2000 ANSI Lumens. And the contrast is perfectly respectable (though hardly earth-shattering) at 2000:1. Other H5350 features are predictably thin on the ground, and there's a connection disappointment too in the form of just a single v1.2 (so no Deep Color) HDMI. The H5350 is also not the easiest projector to set up, since it only has a tiny amount of optical zoom, and the minute remote control is pretty horrible. However, bargain hounds will be delighted to hear that the H5350's pictures are far from the disasters you might have anticipated. Pictures look as bright as those from many far more expensive projectors, for instance, yet this brightness doesn't come at the expense of passable black level depth. Colours are vibrant too, and blend pretty well for a non-full HD projector. Fine detail levels are also more than solid for a projector of the H5350's specification, and it even runs pretty quietly despite its high brightness output. The H5350's performance is not totally immune to its cheapness, though. By far the worst problem is the amount of DLP rainbow effect it suffers from. Anyone susceptible to seeing this phenomenon (not everybody is), will see pure colour stripes flitting around their peripheral vision at times, or over particularly bright parts of the picture. Other issues are that dark scenes can look low on detail, and some colour tones look a bit off-key, especially where low-lit skin tones are concerned. These problems combine to make the H5350 the weakest performer in this group test. But provided you're not particularly sensitive to the rainbow effect, it's still good enough to be called a genuine bargain.

Verdict Plus points Cheap as chips, small footprint, very bright pictures Minus points Rainbow effect, lack of detail in dark areas, some odd colours, HDMI not v1.3

Overview Price comparison: InFocus X10 Price: £999 More info: InFocus Size: 476(w) x 148(h) x 432(d)mm Weight: 6.5kg Native aspect ratio: 16:9 Claimed max contrast ratio: 7500:1 Claimed max brightness: 1200ANSI Lumens Connections: One HDMI 1.3 input; one M1-DA input with HDMI 1.3 capability - adaptor included); vertical/horizontal 12v screen triggers; component video input, composite video input, S-Video input, serial port

For instance, it boasts two digital video inputs, both compatible with the latest v1.3 HDMI standard for playback of the latest Deep Color format. Plus its native contrast ratio is reckoned to be an impressive 7500:1, and perhaps most remarkable of all it's a DLP model with a full HD resolution. Full HD DLP projectors are seldom found at under £2k, never mind £999.

As if all this wasn't already mind-boggling enough, the X10 also claims a startlingly high contrast ratio of 7500:1, and an even more startling (for under £1,000) brightness maximum of 1200 ANSI Lumens.

A possible clue to the X10's seemingly inexplicably low price is its use of a Texas Instruments DC1 chipset, when DC4 models are now starting to appear (and yes, we did also have DC2 and DC3 in-between).

But actually there's little if anything in the X10's performance that gives away the presence of such an aging piece of tech. For instance, HD pictures look impeccably sharp, with every last pixel of source picture information perfectly rendered. Even standard definition pictures look impressively crisp and noiseless.

Colours, too, are really remarkably accurate for this level of the market, with extremely natural skin tones, plenty of richness and pretty much perfect blends.

The DC1 chipset must surely reveal its age with the X10's black level response, right? Wrong. Actually dark scenes on the X10 look far less grey and cloudy than they do on all of our other contenders today, helping images look far more cinematic.

Making these really nice black levels even more exceptional is the fact that they're achieved while the picture remains extremely bright by budget projection standards.

The X10 is, inevitably, not perfect. There are traces of DLP's rainbow effect (described in the Acer review above). Plus it runs quite noisily. And finally, people with small living rooms might also find its surprisingly long-throw lens problematic.

But none of this should distract us for an instant from the fact that the X10 is so good for (just) under a grand that it's almost unfair.