Optoma Themescene HD200x review

Optoma's Themescene HD200x is one of the cheapest 1080p projectors around. The benefit of the extra detail this provides is clearly visible in side-by-side comparisons with a 720p projector: fine droplets of water on a flower and the pitting in a piece of rock were beautifully sharp.

The HD200x has all the usual video inputs (composite, component, VGA and two HDMI ports) and a range of default colour settings. We found the Cinema and Reference settings most pleasing for watching films. Cinema has intense but very well balanced colour, while Reference mode produces slightly muted colours for a more natural effect. The intensity of Bright mode is best if you want to connect the projector to a PC.

DLP projectors generally have excellent contrast and dark tone reproduction, so we were surprised to find that scenes that should have had a deep black background were instead a little greyish in most modes. Raising the contrast and lowering the brightness made for darker blacks and brighter highlights, but we were unable to make black areas look dark enough without seriously affecting colour reproduction.

Another issue is the HD200x's tendency to suffer from the DLP rainbow effect when it displays black and white content. This was visible on everything from on-screen icons from our Blu-ray player to black and white film sequences. Although these issues compromise the projector, we were generally impressed by its Full HD detail and beautiful colour reproduction.

The menu system is clearly designed and easy to navigate. The Image menu allows you to choose and tweak any of the default modes by changing colour, contrast and brightness settings. Changes are immediately applied to whichever mode you start with, rather than being saved as a separate user-defined mode.

The Display menu allows you to correct problems with projection angle and visual distortion. Another option allows you to switch aspect ratio - this is also easy to do using buttons on the remote control. The remote control lights up every time you touch a button. This is handy, although it was rather dazzling to look at once our eyes had become accustomed to darkness. The projector runs very quietly, with the exception of a brief intensive cooling period when you switch it off.

Running costs are quite cheap compared to other 1080p projectors. A new bulb will cost around £216 and last for 3,000 hours (7p per minute) in normal mode and 4,000 hours (5p per minute) in economy mode.

The HD200x is a good budget projector. It's not without its flaws, especially when compared to other, more expensive, 1080p projectors. It's prone to the DLP rainbow effect when displaying black and white images and deep tones aren't quite as dark as we'd like. However, its colour reproduction is both rich and well balanced, which is enough to compensate for most of its other failings, particularly when gaming or watching sports footage. If you're a serious Film Noir fan or an enthusiast of dark cinematography though, the DLP rainbow effect could detract from your viewing pleasure.

Author: Kat Orphanides