While I’m a huge home cinema enthusiast and a big fan of projectors, I’ve never quite found a way to make one work in my own home.
One day, I intend to turn my garage into a dedicated home cinema space, but as the months and years drift by, the boring, realist part of me has to admit that it could be another decade before I have the money and time for that project.
Do I really want to be limited to my 65-inch TV until then? It’s an absolutely lovely model (I’m currently using a Sony A95L), but there are times when you just want the sort of cinematic experience that is made possible only by an absolutely huge screen.
All of which is why the latest tranche of coffee table projectors has got me all excited.
This isn’t really a new category – projectors that can be positioned on a coffee table have been around for years – but I’ve recently noticed a huge jump in quality.
At this point, you can get a 4K (ok, not native 4K, but convincing 4K processing) projector with HDR support, authentically cinematic picture quality, good gaming specs and a solid smart platform for around £2000 / $2500 / AU$3500.
That’s not a small amount of money, I realise, but it is a bit of a bargain compared to TVs over 100 inches in size, which is how big I would want to go.
Coffee-table projector designs are much better than they used to be, too. The Nebula X1 (above), which admittedly isn’t a perfect performer, is one of the coolest-looking products I’ve seen in a while (I think it’s the Battlestar Galactica vibes I get from the metal chassis and funky red lights). And, while that’s an outlier in some ways, the general move to squatter, squarer designs is great for flexibility.
It’s that flexibility that is most important here. I don’t want to permanently fit a ‘proper’ home cinema projector in my living room (well, I might want to, but let’s just say it’s not really an option), so I need one that can live in a cupboard most of the time and be brought out for occasional movie nights.
I could go for a true portable projector, of course, (and, in fact, my recent experience setting up a Xgimi Mogo 2 Pro in my son’s bedroom triggered much of this fresh interest in projectors in general), but they are too compromised in terms of performance for me to be satisfied.
The coffee-table projector is the ideal solution: a good chunk of the picture quality you get from a proper home cinema projector, with enough portability for easy transport between rooms. Most have genuinely good auto-setup features now, too, so getting everything lined up each time you want to use the projector needn’t be too much of a pain in the bottom.
So, I can have my TV in place permanently for all of my family’s usual viewing, and then get a projector out for when we want that seriously cinematic scale.
There are still a couple of aspects of coffee-table projectors that I find a little off-putting, though.
The first is sound quality. It’s clearly an area of focus for manufacturers, which is great. A big reason for developing that chunky, cuboid aesthetic that is so popular now is that it allows more room for decent speakers; but I haven’t heard a single model that can compete with a decent soundbar.
The Nebula X1 is interesting in that it can be bought with a pair of wireless speakers that work in conjunction with the projector’s own drivers, but this is still an outlier as far as I know. More of this sort of thing would be good.
Why not just plug the projector into your existing sound system? That’s obviously an option, but it’s a bit annoying to have to run an HDMI cable from your coffee table to the front of your room, where the sound system usually is.
There’s also the very good chance that if you have a soundbar, the screen for your projector will stand in front of it, hampering quality.
That brings me to my second negative – screens. I have yet to find one that is affordable, decent quality, and easy to set up, pack up and store. Many claim to be portable, but they still seem to get terribly wrinkled while in storage, and that’s not a problem I want to be dealing with every time I get the projector out.
If you’re reading this and have a screen recommendation, please let me know in the comments.
As for which specific coffee-table projector I have my eye on, it’s the BenQ X3100i. It was good enough to win one of our Awards last year, and when we got it back out this week to use as a benchmark for the Nebula X1, I was reminded just how impressive it is. If I can find a screen that works, I might just have to buy one.
MORE:
These are the best projectors and best portable projectors you can buy right now
And here are the best TVs
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