Acer H7531D review

The 2,000 lumen lamp might suggest the H7531D is bright enough to use with the lights on, but we found that it was easily overwhelmed by ambient light, making darker scenes hard to see. Turning down the lights and closing the curtains made a huge difference, preserving detail in the dimly lit opening scenes of Casino Royale. Unfortunately, this also highlighted the distracting DLP rainbow effect – black and white scenes suffered the most, but it was less pronounced in scenes with bright colours. As is colour wheel spins only three times per frame, you’re more likely to spot the rainbow effect in the H7531D than in other projectors with faster colour wheels. If you’re particularly susceptible to the effect, this alone may be enough to put you off.

Looking past this problem, image quality was reasonably good, with fairly accurate colours once we’d spent some time in the settings menus. Static shots looked great, but fast-moving scenes suffered from some noticeable artefacts and weren’t smooth. With no options for motion smoothing or noise reduction, you’re limited to whatever settings your source devices support. For a 1080p projector Blu-ray movies didn’t look quite as sharp as we’d expect.

At £750, the H7531D is fairly inexpensive for a 1080p projector. It lacks some of the more advanced features of the more expensive competition, but has everything you would want for a home cinema. However, you’re better off spending £10 more on the BenQ W1060 which has a much sharper picture and better image quality at default settings.