Acer 9505BD in the first Cine4Home test
The price offensive: how much projector do you get for your money?
The top dogs of the upmarket home cinema projector market from Epson, Sony and co. currently deliver some of the best picture performance, but with prices from €2,500 upwards, buyers have to dig deep to enjoy a high-quality big-screen picture.
But not every big-screen fan can or wants to spend such a large sum – and they don’t have to: while cheaper projectors used to involve considerable compromises in setup and picture quality, some affordable models from €1,000 now offer picture quality for which you had to spend well over €3,000 just a few years ago. Every year you get “more projector for less money”, in the truest sense of the word.
The established brands in the entry-level segment are Acer, BenQ and Epson, which, in addition to their products, have a solid sales structure and professional customer service, minimising the risk if a warranty claim arises.
That all sounds very promising, but how much picture, installation flexibility and reliability can you currently expect from affordable entry-level projectors, and how far are they still from their luxury siblings?
To answer this question, we chose the brand-new Full HD projector Acer 9505BD as a sample. We deliberately did not choose the “cheapest of the cheap”, but a projector that, according to its specifications, is well equipped at a fair price: for a street price of around €1,250, you get a solid DLP chassis with 3,000 lumens light output, 144 Hz 3D and horizontal and vertical lens shift. We checked all these promises:
1. Chassis & installation
Even when unpacking, we were surprised by the generous dimensions and high weight, which are rarely encountered in this price class. The build quality is also extremely solid and can compete with far higher price classes.
The biggest shortcoming of many affordable entry-level projectors is a lack of installation flexibility, with a small zoom range and no optical lens shift. The Acer 9505BD, however, does have the latter, in the form of two dials on the left-hand side:
These allow the image to be shifted vertically and horizontally in finely controllable steps to compensate for individual installation conditions in the living room.
The range is not as large as with LCD competitors (in higher price classes), but it is enough to make the projector compatible with most living rooms and ceiling heights.
The same applies to the zoom and the associated throw distances: from a moderate 3 metres, the image widths of 2 m and more common in living rooms can be achieved, making the Acer suitable for smaller living rooms too.
Focus and zoom are set manually on the lens, which also looks very large and solid.
Due to the somewhat limited zoom range, the optimum distance must be taken into account and adhered to during installation.
The features in terms of connectivity are truly excellent, beating almost all the competition (including more expensive models): three HDMI inputs, three USB inputs, two VGA inputs and “classics” such as S-Video or YUV are all present. There are also various jack sockets for audio and trigger signals, as well as a LAN interface for network connections. This means the Acer 9505BD can be integrated perfectly into any infrastructure.
In terms of features and build quality, the Acer 9505BD is impressive and can even compete with more expensive price classes. Optical lens shift, numerous inputs and a visually pleasing, well-built chassis are rarely combined like this.
2. Operation & settings
Many entry-level projectors, especially from Acer, have not exactly covered themselves in glory when it comes to operation and configuration either: credit card-sized remote controls and incomplete picture parameters are usually more reminiscent of cheap presentation projectors than picture-optimised home cinema devices.
But here too, the Acer H9505BD has learnt a lot, in view of its slightly higher “over €1,000” price class. The infrared remote is a fully fledged remote control including blue backlighting for darkened rooms. The layout is well structured and commands are transmitted quickly, though not always completely reliably if you do not point the remote directly at the projector.
Progress has also been made in the picture options: whereas previous Acer projectors offered virtually no control over colour gamut, colour temperature and gamma, the necessary RGB controls for white balance and precise gamma settings are present here.
There is even full colour management for calibrating all primary and secondary colours, clearly structured. We explain in the picture test whether and how well all these picture parameters work in practice.
3. Picture quality
A modern home cinema projector must combine appealing brightness with good, neutral colour reproduction and a high degree of depth. A Full HD device is also expected to deliver high optical sharpness with fine detail resolution. Last but not least, 3D should be free of ghosting, with acceptable remaining brightness behind the glasses. We examined all these picture aspects:
3.1 Brightness and contrast
The specifications advertise the 9505BD with 3,000 lumens, an above-average value for a home cinema projector – if it is confirmed in practice.
Maximum light output is achieved by putting the Acer 9505 in high lamp mode, selecting the native colour temperature “CT3”, activating “Brilliant Color” mode and maximising the white level at “10”. Projecting a full-screen white then gives a measured brightness of 2,600 lumens. This value is commendably close to the manufacturer’s specification and makes the Acer an above-average bright projector.
Despite these positive first results, the 9505BD is not as bright as the measurement suggests, because of something not mentioned in the specifications: contrary to the claims, the “Brilliant Color” function with its white emphasis does not display colours particularly brightly, only pale or white picture elements. Strictly speaking, the full 2,600 lumens are only used for black-and-white content; colour images are noticeably darker.
Left: correct ratio between white and colour
Right: white emphasis / white peaking
The diagram above shows the discrepancy between white and colour brightness. To determine the realistic brightness of colour images more precisely, we measure the brightness of each primary colour separately and add them together.
-> ->
100% green + 100% red + 100% blue
The combined brightness of the primary colours, the so-called “Color Light Output”, is 1,300 lumens. Even though this is well below the specification, it is still a very good value for home cinema, delivering suitably bright images on screen widths up to 2.8 m.
A good compromise between brightness and (colour) naturalness is achieved by activating the Brilliant Color function and reducing the white level to 5–7. This leaves a very good 1,800 lumens with a good balance between colours and white elements in the picture.
For contrast, the manufacturer promises a dynamic range of 10,000:1, but does not say how this is achieved, as DLP projectors have so far been unable to reach such high native contrast without aids such as adaptive irises.
The picture menu includes a “Dynamic Black” function which, according to the manual, should improve black level and contrast in dark film scenes. It is obviously an adaptive lamp control based on the proportion of black in the image. For this reason, the “Dynamic Black” function cannot be combined with eco lamp mode, so the projector is always louder when it is activated.
With “Dynamic Black” combined with “Brilliant Color” and maximum “White Peaking”, the Acer 9505BD achieves its maximum contrast ratio, which at 3,000:1 falls well short of the specification. This is a very good result for a bright DLP projector, but contrast weaknesses show above all in the black level, which looks grey and brightens dark scenes with a veil of mist. Shadow detail and depth suffer as a result.
A standard-compliant gamma is important for making proper use of the dynamic range and for natural brightness composition (exposure). It can be set in the picture menu; nominally, “2.2” would correspond to the video standard.
Our measurement shows, however, that the Acer 9505BD does not deliver on screen exactly what the menu promises. Especially with Brilliant Color activated, the gamma at “2.5” is steeper than the standard requires (2.2). This impairs shadow detail in dark scenes.
The “2.0” preset actually gives the standard gamma of 2.2
We therefore recommend the gamma preset “2.0”, which gives a standard-compliant gamma of 2.2. In addition, the contrast control must be reduced slightly to “46” to prevent clipping.
Colour reproduction
Bright DLP projectors often show weaknesses in their primary colours; green frequently appears slightly yellowish in order to mobilise even more light reserves (the more yellow in the green, the brighter). Not so with the Acer 9505BD – on the contrary: out of the box, it even shows a slightly larger colour gamut than the HD standard, with correspondingly strong colours.
The slightly extended colour gamut is well suited to compensating for the colour brightness that is reduced relative to the white level (see the brightness chapter). If you want even more accurate colour reproduction, you can calibrate the colour gamut using the colour management, which actually works as it should.
All primary and secondary colours reach their target values in exemplary fashion; only the white point misses its target slightly. Correcting it with the RGB gain/offset controls should really be no problem, but unfortunately the controls do not work flawlessly. The brightness controls affect the dark greyscale as usual, but the gain controls refuse to work. So the only option is to choose the colour temperature preset closest to the standard, which is the “CT1” setting.
Fortunately, this preset is accurate enough to ensure accurate colour mixing with a natural white balance.
However, the “Brilliant Color” function must be activated for this, because with Brilliant Color deactivated a lack of green creeps into the picture, which cannot be corrected either due to the limited RGB menu.
Sharpness
A Full HD projector should above all do one thing: project in high resolution, true to detail and optically sharp, provided the source material is up to it. DLP projectors have an advantage here because they work with just one imaging chip, so there are no convergence errors (colour fringing).
With the Acer 9505BD, it is important to activate pixel-accurate mapping, which is not enabled out of the box. To do this, deactivate automatic adjustment in the signal menu and switch to “Underscan”. The projector then maps pixel-perfectly, free of distracting interference or linearity fluctuations caused by scaling.
Pixel-perfect Full HD reproduction
The lens ensures very good sharpness right into the edges – here the Acer does credit to its DLP breed and puts its LCD competitors in their place. Motion sharpness is also good, although unfortunately the projector has no 120 Hz frame interpolation. Fans of smooth motion will miss this very much. Given that several previous Acer projector models had this feature, this cost-cutting measure is incomprehensible.
3D performance
It is commendable that, despite its low price, the projector comes with two pairs of 3D glasses. Given suitable films, the three-dimensional fun can start straight away.
What matters in 3D is a picture that is as bright and flicker-free as possible without ghosting. The refresh rate can be switched between 96 Hz and 144 Hz in the menu. The higher frequency is recommended, as 72 Hz per eye results in a flicker-free viewing experience.
In terms of 3D quality, the Acer 9505BD benefits from its high brightness and DLP technology. Switching times are so fast that image separation is excellent and no distracting ghosting is evident. Brightness is adequate and the picture is flicker-free. This means you can watch an entire feature film in 3D or play 3D games without fatigue. For films, we once again miss frame interpolation for a smoother experience – the 24 frames per second of the cinema original undermine the credibility of three-dimensional motion.
Conclusion
With the 9505BD, Acer shows how much projector and picture you can already expect in the price class just above €1,000:
The chassis is above average in features and build quality and offers good installation flexibility, making it compatible with most living rooms. The optical lens shift, a rarity in affordable DLP projectors, and the numerous inputs deserve particular praise. The simple white design also makes the projector unobtrusive when ceiling-mounted in the living room.
Picture quality is characterised by high brightness, so projection is possible even without complete darkening. This is particularly useful during the World Cup or Formula 1 season – after all, who wants to cheer on their team in a darkened room? Colour reproduction is also better than on previous Acer projectors: if you choose the right presets, colours appear convincing and can be partly optimised further, although unfortunately a full calibration of the colour temperature is not possible.
In terms of brightness and contrast, the picture’s radiance is convincing, but the black level noticeably brightens dark film scenes – here the projector reaches its cost limits, because nothing is more demanding in a home cinema projector than achieving a good black level and contrast, which therefore comes at a correspondingly higher price.
The detail sharpness and resolution of the Acer 9505BD are convincing and superior to most 3-chip models. Sharpness fetishists will get their money’s worth here, even though the lack of 120 Hz frame interpolation seems incomprehensible, as it is now found in cheaper price classes too.
All 3D fans will also get their money’s worth, as the 9505, typically for DLP, uses 144 Hz triple flash to conjure an appealing and, above all, flicker-free picture onto the screen that is easy on the eyes.
All in all, the Acer 9505BD is an affordable and capable living room all-rounder that brings the big-screen experience home without much effort and is a real alternative to a conventional TV. Of course, it does not reach the reference performance of more expensive devices in colour and contrast, but at €1,250 it offers very good value for money. You will not currently find more features, flexibility and picture for the price anywhere.
Matching product categories in our shop:
Further guides:
- Projector buying guide using the BEAM method – overview of all guides
