Home theatre projectors are continuing to make a case for themselves, as genuine TV replacements. That is particularly true if you’re in the market for a premium 4K TV, priced around and upwards of ₹1,50,000. A good 4K projector around the same price (or maybe a bit more) as a TV that you’re eyeing, will give you the flexibility of a much larger screen size to view content on. That immediately means better value for the money you spend, most things considered. The new ViewSonic CPB701- 4K projector is one such option to add to the shortlist.
The ViewSonic CPB701- 4K projector is priced around ₹1,99,000 but you may be able to get some good deals if you play the credit cards right. That is less than a 65-inch Sony Bravia X90J (this is around ₹2,39,900) and just a bit more money than the 75-inch Samsung AU8000 Crystal 4K TV range (this is around ₹1,89,990). You’ll instead experience a projection size of as much as 120-inch (and more too, if you have the wall and the space).
It must be noted that you’re shopping towards the lower end of the 4K projector price spectrum with the ViewSonic CPB701- 4K, which means you’ll have to make do with missing out on the modern day features such as Android TV based streaming features (an Amazon Fire TV Stick will come handy), 1.1x optical zoom, very basic built-in audio and a conventional design that isn’t exactly putting this in the more convenient ultra-short throw projector category. You probably wouldn’t mind that if good 4K projection is your only criteria for the splurge.
Setting this up requires space that’s a few feet away from the wall — and further away the larger you want the projection to be. That’s the old school way of getting projectors going. This is rated at 3,500 lumens, and in our experience in a home environment, you’ll be able to very much use this with some ambient light active. If you intend to place the projector in a living room, you won’t need to turn off all the lights when this is in use. It supports up to 240Hz refresh rate and ticks off the HDR10 and HLG format support, but not Dolby Vision (that’s a lot of content on Netflix, mind you).
{{/usCountry}}Setting this up requires space that’s a few feet away from the wall — and further away the larger you want the projection to be. That’s the old school way of getting projectors going. This is rated at 3,500 lumens, and in our experience in a home environment, you’ll be able to very much use this with some ambient light active. If you intend to place the projector in a living room, you won’t need to turn off all the lights when this is in use. It supports up to 240Hz refresh rate and ticks off the HDR10 and HLG format support, but not Dolby Vision (that’s a lot of content on Netflix, mind you).
{{/usCountry}}You must plug in a 4K content source, such as an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K or an Apple TV. And the ViewSonic CPB701- 4K projector does make the expenditure feel worthwhile when the high-quality content comes streaming through. This is bright, vivid and very crisp too (make sure to get the focus aligned perfectly), and makes for great viewing across genres of content—TV shows and movies as well as sports. Fast moving visuals are handled fairly well though we did notice very slight momentary blurring on an object with certain content. We’ll have to probably mark that down as a content bitrate condition, than the projector’s handling of fast-moving visuals.
Colours are done well by the ViewSonic CPB701- 4K projector. That’s great, if you’ll manually tune the brightness, contrast and colour settings— these are quite detailed, mind you. There is also the option to choose from pre-set modes, though we feel Movie mode handles colours the best while the Brightest mode is purely leaning towards visibility with compromises on colour accuracy and exposure. And if you are to turn on the Eco settings, the picture illumination doesn’t see as much of darkening as it does on some other projectors.
Sound isn’t as much a disappointment as it is limiting, which isn’t what you’d expect in a projector on sale now. The 10-watt speaker system that resides inside it is not what you would rely on for movies or TV shows or Live sports. You’ll need to get this going with at least a soundbar, but then again, there isn’t an optical out option available.
The thing with the ViewSonic CPB701- 4K projector is that it does well on the visual side of things. 4K and HD content looks really good, and it has enough brightness to work with that you don’t need to turn off the lights. But good visuals without matching sound is incomplete, and that’s where the CPB701-4K is steadfastly clinging on to the past, where projectors never appreciated their role in delivering good audio as well. A lot of the experience is very classic in a way, down to the design, the way this has to be installed, the remote you interface with and the need for a 4K streaming device to go with it. Good as a first leap into the projector universe, but you’ll feel the need to upgrade soon enough.