A projector box quotes a screen size without saying from how far back.

“Up to 300 inches” is a true statement about a room you do not have

A throw ratio is distance divided by image width, and it is the only spec on the sheet that tells you where the projector has to live. A 1.5:1 lens needs eleven feet of clear line for a 100-inch picture; a 0.25:1 lens needs a foot. The headline screen size on the packaging is usually the far end of the zoom at a distance that would put the projector in the next room, which is why two projectors advertising the same maximum can be impossible and trivial to fit.

So every card and every detail page here answers the question from whichever end is a real decision — screen size at a fixed distance for a standard-throw projector, distance for a fixed screen for an ultra-short-throw one. Those figures are labelled estimates wherever they appear, because a real install loses a little to lens offset and makers quote zoom at the extremes of the lens. The median projector in this catalog makes roughly a 115-inch picture from ten feet at its widest zoom.

Brightness only compares if the same standard produced it

ISO 21118 and ANSI IT7.228 both average nine points across the projected image, so their figures can be set against each other. “LED lumens”, “light source lumens” and CVIA figures measure something else, and a brightness column that silently mixes them is the oldest trick in this category. The catalog records the standard with every figure. All 63 projectors listed today carry an ISO or ANSI figure; anything that arrives on another scale is marked on its card and sorted below them rather than blended in. 2 projectors here print a packaging figure that does not match the standardized one, and both numbers are shown. The long version is in the spec guide.

How a projector gets classified

Each unit is filed under one of 5 types (home theater, ust laser tv, lifestyle, portable, gaming), one of 5 light sources, one of 5 imaging technologies and one of 4 native resolutions. The vocabulary is applied across the catalog rather than copied from each brand’s own words, because the words drift: a projector sold as “4K” is frequently a 1080p or 1440p panel shifting pixels four times per frame, and this catalog separates 41 pixel-shifted models from 5 native-4K ones on the card itself.

Specifications come from each manufacturer’s published product and support pages, cross-checked against ProjectorCentral, which is the one public database that consistently records which standard a brightness figure was taken to. Every detail page lists the specific URLs used for that model. Nothing here is measured by us: no light meter, no colorimeter, no darkened room, no test lab of any kind. Where a figure is a manufacturer’s claim it is presented as one.

What owners say stays in its own box

The pros and cons in the specification copy are read off spec sheets and published measurements. Anything sourced from people who bought the projector lives in a separate, labelled block, drawn from public owner discussion, and it exists for 40 of the 63 projectors here — the ones with enough real discussion to say something specific about fan noise at three feet, or a rainbow effect one person sees and another does not. Another 23 pages say plainly that there is no owner section yet, instead of showing a thin one.

A blank cell is a finding

Contrast is where this shows up most. A native contrast ratio — the actual difference between black and white the panel can hold in one frame — is published for 17 of the 63 projectors here. 23 publish only a dynamic figure, which mostly measures how far the light source dims during a dark scene and is a different quantity; 23 publish neither. The native column stays empty on those rather than borrowing the dynamic number, which is how a 35,000:1 marketing figure ends up sitting next to a measured 2,000:1 as though they were rivals.

The same rule runs everywhere: input lag is shown for 28 projectors, fan noise in decibels for 45, and the rest are blank. No figure on this site is estimated into a gap, and no star ratings appear at all, because the catalog carries none from a citable non-retailer source and inventing review markup is exactly the thing this site exists not to do.

Nothing in this order is worth money to us

Two people, alongside other things. Nowhere dark enough to test in, no staff, no reviewer, no lab. Nothing on this site is a paid placement, no manufacturer has any input into what is listed or in what order, and no money changes hands with anyone who makes a projector. There are no retailer links of any kind — no buy buttons, no affiliate tags, no “check price” row — so the ranking has nothing to earn by being wrong.

Each price is an approximate figure noted when the catalog was last refreshed and will differ from what any shop is charging today; they are here to place a projector in its class, not to be shopped from. What the site does with your visit is set out in the privacy page, and the method behind the lists is in how we compare.

What a refresh actually re-reads

Every manufacturer page behind this catalog was last re-read on 2026-09-23, and that date — printed in the footer of every page and used as the modification date in the sitemap — moves only when the data actually does. A refresh means re-reading manufacturer pages for the models already listed, adding projectors that have shipped since, and retiring nothing: a discontinued model stays, because the people looking it up are usually the ones who already own it.

Safety notices go up as soon as they are published, on the affected model itself rather than in a corner. 1 of the 63 does today: BenQ GV31, which is not quietly deleted for the same reason. A wrong spec is worth more to us than a polite email, so send the correction.