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Many people will celebrate the festival of football that is the World Cup by purchasing a new TV, but Roku is banking on the fact that people will want to go bigger this year, and is releasing a pair of new projectors in time for the tournament.
The company is releasing two very similar projectors – the Auzern Roku TV Smart Projector and the Sharp Roku TV Smart Projector – both running Roku’s provider-agnostic streaming OS.
No prices have been announced at the time of writing, but the Aurzen model is listed on Amazon in the US for around $200 (currently on offer for $130), which means it probably won’t be any more expensive than £200. And, since the Sharp model is very similar, you can expect it to cost around the same amount.
The Aurzen projector will be available from Amazon in June, while the Sharp model will be on sale in Asda supermarkets in June and Tesco in July.
Specifications and first impressions
At these prices, they’re not going to compete with the likes of our favourite projectors – the £1,855 HiSense C2 Pro – in terms of brightness or sharpness.
The Aurzen is rated at 280 lumens and the Sharp at a mere 200 lumens from a simple LED light source, and resolution for both is Full HD (1,920 x 1,080). The lack of brightness means you have to use these projectors in the evening or with the curtains drawn, otherwise the image will look washed out.
However, I was impressed with how easy to use both projectors were when I was shown them at a recent demo event in London. The built-in Roku OS means you don’t have to plug in an HDMI streaming stick to access all your favourite services . In fact, it’s one of the simplest streaming OSes we’ve come across and the remote is easy to use, too.
The firm will also be debuting a new football zone in the OS this summer, which should make finding out which channels are showing the live games super easy.
Perhaps even more impressive, both projectors have built-in autofocus and auto-keystoning: features that, when combined, mean you can point the projector at any suitable nearby wall, and the projector will use its internal sensors to set up the picture automatically.
These features aren’t particularly common on budget projectors, and they worked surprisingly well when I was shown the projectors in action. Either way, I can see these selling like hot cakes when they hit the shops in June. We’ll endeavour to get our hands on them for review as soon as we can, so keep an eye out.
