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- Great 4K picture for the money
- Very simple to operate
- Useful game modes with low lag
- Capable of 1440p at 120Hz
- Game modes cancel keystoning corrections
- Hollow-sounding audio
- Lacks the deep blacks and high brightness for convincing HDR
The Philips GamePix 900 made headlines when it was announced thanks to it being offered for pre-order at the absolute bargain price of £495 – still just about available at the time of writing. While this wouldn’t be news for your average 1080p LED compact projector, the GamePix 900 is a 4K model, with 1,000 ANSI lumens of brightness and HDR10 support.
Under £500, it’s an incredible bargain, but will it still be worth consideration when it’s retailing for its recommended £819?
What do you get for the money?
This is a compact 4K projector aimed squarely at the gaming market. Of course, like most affordable 4K models, it doesn’t actually have a native 4K resolution, instead using pixel shifting at 240Hz to create a 4K image from a 0.47in, 1080p DLP chip. However, as mentioned, it claims to have a brightness output of 1,000 ANSI lumens, offers HDR10 support, and packs in a 5W speaker. And its LED light source should be good for up to 30,000 hours of viewing.
Philips also promises just 6ms of latency and gives you a choice of three preset game modes intent on targeting specific video game genres, with ‘Action Gaming’ optimised for visibility in dark scenes, ‘Adventure Gaming’ focusing on contrast and HDR enhancement and ‘Sports Gaming’ prioritising vivid colours. There’s no VRR support and the headline 240Hz refresh rate and 6ms lag only count if you’re playing games at 1080p – switch to 1440p at 120Hz and you get a lag time of 8ms, and Philips doesn’t even specify the input lag for 4K at 60Hz.
Philips claims that, with this projector, you’ll be able to enjoy images measuring up to ten feet, diagonally. However, at a throw ratio of 1.5:1, you’re going to need a good-sized room to achieve such a picture – for some idea, you’d need more than four and a half metres for the maximum screen size, and nearly four metres to fill a 100in, 16:9 screen.
Unlike most of the projectors we’ve seen recently, there’s no built-in streaming with this – just a single HDMI 2.0 port for you to hook up your gaming PC or console. Or if you’d rather plug in a streaming stick, the HDMI port and USB Type-A port (for power) will support this. The only audio output is a 3.5mm line-out.
What does it do well?
The lack of streaming features and connections gives the GamePix 900 a certain bare-bones purity – plug in, power up and go. The 4K image quality is generally very good but, with only 1,000 ANSI lumens to play with, it can’t give you the kind of super-bright, pin-sharp images you’d get from the XGIMI Horizon Ultra or the Anker Nebula Cosmos 4K SE, let alone the brilliant BenQ X500i. That said, connected to a PS5, an Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max or a gaming laptop, I found that movies and TV shows still looked great in a darkened room, even if the blacks aren’t quite dark enough or the highlights bright enough for really convincing HDR effects – they’re visible, but not spectacular.
For all that, I was pleasantly surprised by the GamePix 900’s clarity and grasp of colour. In my tests, it covered 89.5% of the sRGB colour gamut with a volume of 123.6% and 73.3% of DCI-P3. That’s actually better than the BenQ X500i or the Nebula 4K SE. Steer clear of the ‘Brightest’ mode, with its nasty green tinge, and you can get some strong cinematic output from both the ‘Standard’ and ‘Movie’ settings. Alternatively, there is a ‘User’ mode, if you prefer to dial in your own brightness, contrast and detailed colour settings. Our favourite test sequences from John Wick 3 and Thor: Ragnarok were presented in vibrant colour with lashings of detail, and even more naturally shot movies, like Nickel Boys, still looked fantastic.
Most importantly, the gaming features work pretty well. For 1080p or 1440p at 120Hz, I struggled to spot any sign of lag whatsoever in either of the Adventure Game or Action Game modes, though presentation and clarity took a slight hit due to the lower resolution. And 4K at 60Hz showed nothing that would upset the average gamer, though more demanding eSports players may have a different opinion.
When the colours are this good, nothing beats playing games like Avowed, Cyberpunk 2077, or Metaphor: ReFantazio on a 100in screen. In fact, the Action Game mode seems to manage to pull out a little extra detail from the shadows, which can be a lifesaver in Elden Ring, Doom Eternal or Resident Evil 4.
What could it do better?
At the £500 price point, there’s nothing much wrong with the GamePix 900 that should put you off, but at the normal £800 price there are a couple of things to consider.
Firstly, the sound quality really isn’t that great. The 5W speaker and sound chamber can go loud, and the clarity is fine, but there’s precious little bass. Instead, there’s a slightly tinny quality to the audio, transforming booms into dull thuds and drumbeats into hollow thwacks. Our advice would be to stick to your headset when you’re gaming, and perhaps think about plugging in an external speaker when you want to watch movies.
And secondly, while it’s possible that I’ve been spoiled by fancy modern projectors with their automatic keystone, autofocus and distortion correction, the GamePix 900’s manual approach to all three does take some getting used to, even if the focus and zoom controls do make getting a crisp image nice and easy. Unfortunately, the bigger worry is that the game modes drop any digital keystone adjustments in order to minimise lag. This isn’t unusual for a gaming projector, but it means you really have to get the relative position of the projector to the screen spot-on, and avoid relying on the screw-out foot to point the image upwards. To get the best out of the GamePix 900, you need to have it at exactly the right height and pointing straight at the screen.
Should you buy the Philips GamePix 900?
Here’s where things get tricky. At the initial discounted price, it’s a no-brainer. The GamePix 900 offers fantastic value for gamers – provided they have the time and circumstances to get it properly set up – as there’s nothing else around that will give you such good 4K image quality for that kind of money.
However, it loses out in terms of convenience and ease-of-use to the XGIMI Horizon Ultra and the Anker Nebula Cosmos 4K SE. It also can’t match the brighter, punchier presentation and stronger HDR performance of the BenQ X500i or Optoma UHD-38 (the latter can sometimes be found on sale for under £900).Of course, even at the full RRP, most of the 4K competition still tends to be significantly more expensive than the Philips GamePix 900 – though the Epson EH-TW6150 is a great option for home cinema, if not gaming, at a similar price. Just be aware that spending a little more will get you a brighter image and better sound, and the bare-bones style of the GamePix might not suit everyone.
