Optoma HD28HDR Projector guide

THE BOTTOM LINE

The HD28HDR is best for watching movies and videos in ambient light, though it also has a suitably fast lag time for gaming. It's one of the least expensive 1080p projectors that supports HDR and can accept 4K input.

Optoma HD28HDR Review

A bright projector for movie night on the couch

The Optoma HD28HDR is a well-designed home theater projector. It delivers good color accuracy and contrast for movies and video at a high enough brightness to stand up to ambient light. It also offers a fast enough input lag to keep most gamers happy. The most notable qualities it shares with Optoma's HD39HDR are support for high dynamic range (HDR) video and the ability to accept 4K (3840-by-2160-pixel) input to downconvert to its native 1080p. The list price is a steep $1,349, but it can often be found for less than half that, making it a bargain among projectors with those two features.

Imaging Chip, Color Wheel, and Setup Details

The HD28HDR is built around a 1920-by-1080-pixel DLP chip and a six-segment RYGCWB (red, yellow, green, cyan, white, blue) color wheel. The white segment delivers extra brightness, and the yellow and cyan help counter the white segment's effects on color accuracy.

Setup is typical for a projector this size. It's easy to handle, at just 6.2 pounds and 4.3 by 12.4 by 9.7 inches (HWD). Simply point it at the screen, adjust the 1.1x zoom, and focus. If you need to tilt it up or down, you can square off the image with the +/- 40 degree keystone adjustment. Inputs include two HDMI ports, but only one is HDMI 2.0, the minimum required for 4K 60Hz resolution. The other is HDMI 1.4b, suitable for up to 4K 30Hz. Both support HDCP 2.2, the copy protection scheme that almost all 4K HDR discs use. For my formal tests using a 90-inch screen, I set the projector up using maximum zoom (for shortest distance for the image size) at 9 feet 6 inches from the screen.

Tech

Home Entertainment

Optoma HD28HDR review: Bright HDR projector on a budget

One of the cheapest HDR-compatible projectors isn't quite as dynamic with standard video.

The Optoma HD28HDR gives away its claim to fame right in its pithy name: HDR. Unlike most inexpensive projectors, it works with high dynamic range video. With higher-end TVs HDR makes a big difference in image quality, but with projectors it's a different story: Projectors lack the HDR-friendly hardware like OLED and full-array local dimming that can make HDR sources on TVs shine. This Optoma is quite bright but its HDR compatibility doesn't make it massively better than the non-HDR competition.

I compared the HD28HDR to two non-HDR projectors we like, the BenQ HT2050A, and the Epson HC2150. Both are close in price and in many ways close in performance, but with HDR sources the Optoma HD28HDR does look slightly better than either one. But standard, non-HDR video is still way more common than HDR, and with standard video the Optoma HD28HDR is fairly average. This projector is the best among the three if you're the kind of person who watches mostly HDR -- reserving the projector for high-end games or special movie nights for example -- but the other two are superior all-around choices.