Optoma HD131Xe Projector – Summary

HD131Xe Projector: Summary - Picture Quality

Projector Brightness

Although this Optoma did not come particularly close to their 2500 lumen claim (remember we don’t measure for maximum brightness, but maximum watchable brightness), the almost 1800 lumens still makes it one of the brightest home projectors around.

So far, most of the bright new projectors out there tend to measure between about 1500 to 2200 lumens, the way we do things.  That makes this a nicely inexpensive light canon.

Brightness is more dependent on the Brilliant Color setting than which mode you select.  In fact, if you look at the less bright modes on the chart on the performance page, you would find that they have lower Brilliant Color settings, than those who measure highest (Bright, with BC at 10).

Brilliant Color not only adds brightness, but also a certain amount of pop to the image.  By that, I’m saying the image looks particularly dynamic.

That’s a very good thing when fighting ambient light, but if you are looking for the most natural looking picture, and skin tones, that won’t be with Brilliant Color at 10.  For comparison, Cinema looks better/more natural, and its Brilliant Color setting defaults to 5, which means that mode is good for only 1123 lumens, our about 1/3 less than modes with Brilliant Color at 10.

In other words, when you don’t need all the brightness of the “brightest” modes, just dial down the Brilliant Color, giving up significant brightness, but improving the naturalness of the picture.

Gaming with the HD131Xe Projector

I see no picture issues relating to gaming, dark corners aren’t too dark that might hide some enemy soldier in Call Of Duty, etc.   Color accuracy, of course, just isn’t that important for gaming, pretty much a non-factor.

That makes lag times the most important aspect to determine how good this 1080p Optoma projector is for serious gaming.

Let’s say that this Optoma should make an excellent gaming projector.  I should note, as well, that the 17 millisecond lag time measured, is the same as we found when reviewing the lower res, sub $700 GT760, one of Optoma’s projectors specifically targeted gamers.

Our measurements showed a lag time of just 17 milliseconds, which, is less than one frame if your source is 60fps.

Improving on this speed really doesn’t further improve playing, according to our old gaming bloggers.

In the general opinion of those guys, and feedback from readers, we long ago concluded that anything better than 35 ms, is fine for the vast majority of serious gamers.  Marginal – good enough for most gamers, but a few will complain, is a lag time of 50ms.  Anything noticeably slower than 50 ms, will garner complaints from too high a percentage of hard core gamers, to recommend.