Acer P7605 in the Cine4Home test
The light cannon for everyday living room projection at home
Most home cinema projectors from various manufacturers are optimised in their picture characteristics for particularly high-contrast projection with a particularly deep black level. Under controlled lighting conditions (complete darkness), this tuning does lead to a particularly three-dimensional picture, but one common compromise should not go unmentioned: their light output is usually limited in favour of contrast and is not suitable for projection in bright surroundings.
If, however, you value everyday practicality – in other words, you want to use the projector as a TV replacement in rooms that are not darkened – the requirements shift: instead of the deepest possible black level, light output comes to the fore, because only a particularly bright projector can “hold its own” against daylight, and several thousand lumens are needed for this. If a projector offers such light reserves, it can, in combination with a suitable screen, achieve picture quality that competes with a conventional TV – only much bigger!
Projectors with this kind of performance have so far been few and far between in the consumer sector; you always had to resort to presentation devices for professional applications, which were either not tuned for home cinema requirements at all or cost many times more and therefore seemed uneconomical.
But more and more manufacturers are recognising that there is great potential for particularly bright projectors at home too. One of them is the well-known IT brand Acer, which is known in the projector sector for particularly affordable models. With its current model, the P7605, Acer now offers a Full HD / WUXGA projector that, with a claimed light output of 5,000 lumens (based on DLP technology), seems predestined for bright living room projection. The price of around €1,900 is also attractive and no higher than that of a mid-range TV.
So instead of the “usual suspects” among home cinema projectors, this time we took a close look at this light cannon and examined whether the Acer P7605 delivers what its manufacturer promises and whether other compromises in picture quality have to be made in favour of light output. How “home cinema capable” is the P7605?
1. Chassis & installation
Gone are the days when projectors of Taiwanese origin came across as poorly made “cheap toys”. The P7605 not only impresses with a very elegant appearance but is also extremely solid and heavy. Here it more than lives up to its price class.
Only its black colour could be seen as a drawback: projectors at home are usually ceiling-mounted, and a dark finish stands out particularly against a white ceiling, which not everyone likes. On the other hand, the glossy piano lacquer finish looks very classy and has nothing to hide.
Gone, too, are the days when bright DLP projectors were inflexible to install: like most home cinema projectors, the Acer P7605 offers optical lens shift, which allows the image to be moved horizontally and vertically without moving the projector even a millimetre. This makes positioning in the room easier.
However, it still does not reach the flexibility of many other home cinema models, as the lens shift range of 15% (H) and approx. 20% (V) is not exactly generous, so the optimum position for the P7605 is still centrally in front of the screen.
The adjustable throw ratio, which determines the distance between screen and projector, is exemplary. In room lengths of 3 m to 5 m, common in this country, image widths between 2 m and 3 m can be achieved without any problems.
Focus and zoom are set manually on the lens, which looks large and solid, but the luxury of motorisation has been omitted. As you usually only need to adjust the projector once during installation, this is easy to live with.
The complete connection panel for cabling all your sources is located on the back of the device.
The variety is truly excellent, beating almost all the competition (including more expensive models): three HDMI inputs, three USB inputs, two VGA inputs and increasingly rare analogue sockets 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 P7605 can be integrated perfectly into any infrastructure.
And that is still not all: with the optional wireless dongle, it is even possible to feed the projector with picture data or control signals wirelessly.
In terms of features and build quality, the Acer P7605 is on a par with many of its (more expensive) home cinema counterparts from other brands. Despite lens shift and zoom, it is not quite as flexible to install, but it offers all the more variety in inputs. Installation in most living rooms should not be a problem.
2. Operation & settings
Almost all manufacturers no longer develop individual remote controls but use one and the same model for an entire product range. So it comes as no surprise that the P7605’s infrared remote is a twin of the H9505 version in black:
It is a fully fledged remote control including 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.
The menu structure is exemplary in its clarity and offers numerous picture parameters, though it does not allow such detailed control as most home cinema-optimised devices.
We still miss a gamma equaliser or separate controls for colour temperature. Here you still have to rely on the accuracy of the factory presets.
3. Picture quality
Projectors with high light output are above all one thing: bright! Other important picture characteristics such as colour accuracy and contrast often fall by the wayside. It is very difficult for a single-chip DLP projector to combine a lot of light with a good black level and strong colours. We examined how well (or not) the Acer P7605 manages this.
3.1 Brightness and contrast
The manufacturer states the P7605’s light output as 5,000 lumens, an unbeatably high value. In fact, it is “too good to be true”. So we measured it ourselves:
The Acer 7605 achieves its maximum light output in high lamp mode at native colour temperature “CT3” with “Brilliant Color” mode activated and white level maximised at “10”. Projecting a full-screen white then gives a measured brightness of 4,100 lumens. This value is very impressive for a compact projector of this class, but falls well short of the specification.
It should also be noted that the projector only achieves this brightness with black-and-white material: contrary to the specifications, the “Brilliant Color” function with its white emphasis does not display colours particularly brightly, only pale or white picture elements. Coloured image content appears underemphasised relative to white.
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 2,300 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 4 m.
For a more natural picture, we recommend reducing the white level of the Brilliant Color function to “5” to “7”.
For contrast, the manufacturer promises a dynamic range of 10,000:1, without any indication of the configuration in which this is achieved. For this reason, we had to determine the best possible setup ourselves:
According to the manual, the “Dynamic Black” function improves black level and contrast in dark film scenes. It does this by dimming the lamp for image content with a high proportion of black. Alongside the best black, the aim is to achieve the best maximum brightness. The P7605 achieves this with “Brilliant Color” and maximum “White Peaking”.
These settings maximise the possible contrast ratio at 2,800:1. This is a good result for such a bright projector, but far below the utopian specification. We would advise the manufacturer to be a little more honest with future products. On screen, the limited contrast mainly shows as a raised black level that covers dark scenes with a noticeable grey veil. Grey screens (with or without gain) are recommended in this context.
Given the limited contrast, a balanced brightness distribution (gamma) in line with the video standard is all the more important. It can be set in the picture menu; nominally, “2.2” would correspond to the video standard.
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 “47” to prevent white clipping.
Colour reproduction
Particularly bright projectors rarely show perfect colours. The reason: the paler the primary colours (red, green and blue) chosen for colour mixing, the more light from the UHP lamp can be “saved” through weaker filtering.
Acer advertises various technologies with “Color Boost”, “Color Safe” and “Brilliant Color”, which are supposed to ensure permanently perfect colour reproduction. Our measurements, however, do not confirm this:
The colour gamut is considerably smaller than the standard, and the primary colours do not match the hues required by the standard. Green in particular is shifted towards yellow in order to mobilise more brightness for the image.
Even with the colour management in the picture menu, the colour gamut cannot be fully calibrated to the HD / sRGB standard. Strong hues suffer from the limited colour gamut, and the picture does not look quite as colourful as it should. This is particularly noticeable with video games and computer animation.
For a natural picture, accurate mixing of the primary colours to the standard – i.e. a correct white balance – is important. As with the H9595, the adjustment options do not work perfectly here, so you have to choose the preset closest to the standard.
The “CT1” preset offers the best approximation here but shows a slight green tint, noticeable especially in skin tones.
Our colour deviation analysis shows that the inaccuracies are still within a tolerable range, but the perfection normally offered by home cinema projectors is not achieved.
Sharpness
In terms of sharpness, we recorded the same results as with the H9506BD, which is not surprising given that the chassis is identical in its optical components:
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).
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.
Very good optical sharpness
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
Like almost all home cinema projectors, the Acer P7605 works on the shutter principle (the glasses darken each eye alternately). This principle has one serious side effect above all: a loss of brightness of over 75%!
For appealing 3D, the simple rule of thumb is therefore: the brighter a projector is “gross”, the more light remains “net” behind the glasses. The more lumens, the better. With almost 4,000 lumens gross, the P7605 is of course predestined for this. And indeed, it delivers a really appealingly bright 3D picture – here it beats almost the entire home cinema competition.
Also important for 3D is a picture that is as 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 P7605 impresses with its remarkable brightness behind the glasses and the typical advantages of DLP technology: switching times are so fast that image separation is excellent and no distracting ghosting is evident. This means you can watch an entire feature film in 3D or play 3D games without fatigue. For films, as with the H9505, we miss frame interpolation for a smoother experience – the 24 frames per second of the cinema original undermine the credibility of three-dimensional motion.
Conclusion
As promised by the manufacturer, the Acer P7605 fills the large gap for particularly bright projectors (>3,000 lumens) in the home cinema segment.
The chassis is visually appealing, well equipped and well made, and thanks to optical lens shift and a short zoom it offers good installation flexibility, making it compatible with most living rooms. Like its sibling, the H9505BD, it sets standards above all in terms of connectivity.
The picture quality is defined by the enormously high brightness which, although it falls well short of the 5,000-lumen specification, makes the P7605 suitable for living rooms that cannot be fully darkened in the afternoon. With the right room planning, this makes it a big-screen alternative to conventional TVs.
However, the brightness demands compromises in colour accuracy and contrast: the P7605’s colour reproduction is somewhat pale overall, and the black level brightens dark scenes distractingly. This is less relevant for daylight projection, but we recommend using a grey gain screen, which noticeably increases the black level and on-screen contrast of darker film scenes. You will find plenty of options in the Beamer-Discount shop!
Detail sharpness and resolution are convincing and superior to most 3-chip models. Fans of particularly sharp pictures 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 P7605, 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. Combined with the high brightness, the Acer almost reaches reference status here – were it not for the lack of high-quality frame interpolation.
Overall, the Acer P7605 is of interest to anyone who wants to enjoy a big screen not only in a “darkroom” but is also looking for an alternative to the “small” TV during the day. At around €1,900, it is considerably more expensive than its less bright sibling, the H9505, but for a projector in the 4,000-lumen class it is still undoubtedly a bargain…
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Further guides:
- Projector buying guide using the BEAM method – overview of all guides
