Pros:
- Extremely bright (Optoma claims 5,000 lumen): makes it possible to watch TV with ambiant day light and impressive HDR performance on a 130’’ screen.
- Extremely sharp (4K 0.66" DLP chip): not “native 3840x2160”, but XPR pixel shifting gives an image as sharp as native 4K for movie watching (but not ideal as a giant 3840x2160 computer screen if you need pixel perfectness)
- Contrast (Optoma claims native 2,000:1 full on/off): I didn’t measure it but it looks accurate, it’s definitely better than an LCD screen. But the contrast can go all the way to 300,000:1 (from Optoma's specs) with Dynamic Black which dims the laser to allow just enough light necessary to show the current frame, making black more black.
- Colors: does not suffer from color brightness crushing, even with BrillantColors set to the max. I measured 97% sRGB, 78% of P3 with a SpyderX.
- HDR: with the right setting you can go from very dark dark scenes with deep blacks and no glowing border to blindingly bright scenes with intense, yet accurate colors.
- 3D: Unlike the UHZ65, the UHZ65LV does support 3D Blu-Ray with DLP Link glasses.
- Turns on at max brightness in a few seconds, no bulb to replace.
- The remote control has a laser pointer… just in case you have a cat.
Cons: (I’m on System Firmware version C04, I hope these are going to be fixed in a future version)
- Has terrible banding issues with HDR in 12bit 4:2:2. Problem solved if the signal 10bit 4:4:4, or 10bit 4:2:0. Workaround for AppleTV: stay in 60fps 10bit 4:2:0, enable “Match Dynamic Range" but do not enable "Match Frame Rate".
- All Dynamic Black modes fail to calculate the light it needs right to preserve accurate colors, typically on small bright objects in mostly dark scenes, it tends to over-dim and crush whites and colors when becoming a solid blob of saturated dim color. Most color enhancement settings make this a lot worse. I ended up turning it off in SDR and finding HDR settings that mostly mitigate the problem. Too bad there is no “don’t crush bright colors” option for Dynamic Black.
- 3D is a bit flaky. Has to be turned of manually every-time, sometimes it fails the first time (stuck in black screen, screen getting split or duplicated, weird flickering messing up with the motion perception part of my brain), but after a few attempts it ends up working and it looks good. Just keep trying.
My settings:
SDR: Modified Cinema mode, Sharpness: 7, Gamma 2.2, Brilliant Color: 1, Color Gamut: Presentation, Dynamic Black OFF, Power: 70%, else to 0/Minimum/Disabled
HDR: Modified HDR mode, Color 10, Sharpness: 7, Gamma 2.4, Brilliant Color: 1, Color Gamut: Presentation, Dynamic Black 2, else to 0/Minimum/Disabled
Conclusion:
There is nothing else on the market in that price range that can deliver and HDR image matching both the super-dark black levels and the super-bright colors/white of this projector (other projectors are too dim or too expensive)
So, no regret, buying it but please Optoma, fix your bugs! You're so close to perfection!
Special kudos to the www.projectorscreen.com support team who still work hard during the COVID-19 crisis and helped me figure out what was happening with my shipment.