I took a look at both the Hisense L9G and PX1-Pro UST projectors. I also compared the PX1-Pro with the JVC NX5 and Optima UHZ65 projectors. I used a Cima Tiburon .8 gain screen and an idis13 with Chromapure software and test disc to conduct testing. Below are my findings with some photos attached.
Hisense PX1-Pro:
Sharpness. 10/10. The PX1-Pro was sharper than the L9, the NX5, and the UHZ65. In fact, the Pro had one of the sharpest images I’ve seen from a projector. I wasn’t expecting that, especially given it uses the smaller .47 TI DLP chip and an actuator to simulate native 4K, as does the L9G.
Contributing to this sharpness phenomenon is not only the fact that the pixels are bouncing off the screen from a few inches away, but that this UST projector is equipped with manual digital remote focus to help tighten things on that front.
The lens configuration is excellent. Brightness uniformity outperformed the UHZ65’s and was slightly better than the NX5 and even the sibling L9. The machine put up rock solid yet cinematically appearing images. Like with the sharpness phenomenon mentioned above, this solidity is likely due to the pixels bouncing off the screen from just inches away.
Motion. 9.5/10. Using “Custom” motion at a setting of 2 for Judder and 2 for Motion Blur produced very smooth motion with no soap opera effect. There were some very rare panning shots of objects or people moving that showed with some mild judder. But overall, at that setting, motion looked natural as if native and slightly better than the native motion of the NX5 and UHZ65.
Resolution. 8.5/10. Oddly, for a smaller chipped shifter projector, the PX1-Pro resolved about the same or almost the same amount of detail as did the native 4K JVC NX5. But again, this DLP comes with better precision from the single chip design, which here is emitting so close to the screen as if the pixels are emanating from an emissive/flat panel display.
Color. 10/10. The relevant color spaces for this discussion are rec709, DCI-P3, and Rec/BT 2020. Rec/BT 2020 being the widest, there isn’t much commercial video content graded to extend color that far out. Some movies like The Matrix, Lucy, and Mad Max, Fury Road, however, do extend beyond DCI-P3. I put those movies in the player and found some noticeable color improvement in certain scenes over my other displays. That is, both the NX5 and UHZ65 are capable of around 90% of P3, while the PX1-Pro is capable of exceeding even Rec2020. While all displays accurately calibrated to DCI-P3 should render the color targets the same, some, like the JVCs, rely on a color filter to get there. What stood out to me with PX1-Pro and the L9 was the native color reproduction showed the purity and brightness of the tri-lasers’ colors.
Compared with the L9, the PX1-Pro had a slight red push. Setting the color temp to mid-low and calibrating the white point helped. Calibrating both the L9 and the PX1-Pro to the Rec2020 color space, the 9 calibrated better. After calibrating it with an i1dis3 off the Tiburon screen, the L9 had a white balance Delta Error (DE) of only .6. Anything below a DE of 3 is hardly detectible. After color calibration of the Standard Picture mode, the 9 had a total average DE of 2.11, which is excellent. Conversely, the PX1-Pro had a total average DE after calibration of 4.43. This was mostly due to controlling green, likely also impacting red. Still, because the 2020 color space exceeds P3 found in almost all UHD content, and the Pro easily met P3, I gave the machine a perfect score here.
HDR. 8.5/10. Tone mapping was overall very good. The machine’s brightness capability was a tremendous help. However, setting the machine’s Active Contrast to High can cause some blown out highlights. Rolling back contrast from default to 42 and setting gamma to 2.2 reduced the effect. I was able to use Active Contrast on High without dialing back contrast when using the PX1-Pro with the Panasonic 820 disc player’s HDR optimizer.
Contrast. 7.5/10. I measured sequential contrast off the lens in Standard picture mode with the laser set to 10 and Laser Light Shift set to -10 with Active Contrast on High to get the best sequential contrast measurement. The lasers do turn off, so technically the machine has infinite contrast, but we don’t watch an all black screen for colorful content. So using enough pixels to keep the PX1-Pro’s lasers from shutting off yielded the sequential contrast measurement of 1,184:1. The L9 measured 1,170:1. Still the black level reading on the PX1-Pro was better than the L9’s. It came in at .45, whereas the black level reading of the L9 was .55. In actual viewing, the Laser Light Shift set to -10 made dark scenes look more convincing than I recalled them being on the Samsung LSP9T I had tested months ago. Also, the PX1-Pro had very good gray gradations in dark scenes.
Compared to the UHZ65 and NX5, however, the blacks on the PX1-Pro appeared as more of a dark gray. For comparison sake, the UHZ65’s best sequential contrast measurement was over 20,000:1 using its mid-laser DD without the laser shutting off and the JVC NX5’s native sequential contrast measurement at open aperture was 29,000:1 (activating the dynamic iris would improve on that number much more).
The reason I still gave the PX1-Pro a decent score, however, was because in addition to the benefit to black levels I presume it would receive from a dedicated .4 gain or .6 gain ALR screen, the PX1-Pro with me registered a relatively high ANSI contrast reading. Before I state the number, I would like you to take note that getting an accurate ANSI contrast measurement is very difficult; it’s very room and low light reflection dependent and a difference in room treatments can cause a variance in results. Anyway, the PX1-Pro, here, came in at 456:1. In “contrast,” the same day measurements of the NX5 was 244:1 and the UHZ65 340:1.
Artifacting. 8/10. I put up a cross hatch pattern onscreen and noticed some chromatic aberration. There was red bleed out of white and very slight blue jutting out but neither had any effect on actual content viewed. I also noticed speckle but could no longer make it out from 9 feet away.
While I saw color separation artifacts (rainbow effect) on the L9, I did not see any on the PX1-Pro in normal viewing. Although neither of the UST units use a color wheel, both units use a single chip and the colors all must pulse/sequence through the one chip at different times. My theory as to why I could not see RBE on the Pro is not that the colors are cycling more rapidly on the Pro than on the 9 but more likely because the Pro is not as bright, so color separation from white is not as noticeable. Then again, perhaps it would be a good idea to ask the Hisense engineers if the cycle speed was increased on the PX1-Pro. Either way, the finding still stands.
Value. 10/10. Feature-packed with true RGB lasers, great sharpness, good lens, strong motion handling, the ability to project up to 130 diagonal inches aided by digital focus capability, this projector, at an MSRP of $3,999, is one of the best value propositions I’ve come across in a long time.
TOTAL UST PROJECTOR SCORE: 9/10