4 reasons I’m never buying a projector TV

For some cinephiles, a projector is the dream. There’s obvious appeal. It means being able to watch on the largest possible screen, in the exact same way theaters haven been presenting movies for a century. In fact, a home projector can make it possible to watch movies in environments that would be completely impractical for a panel TV. When I lived in Austin, I once attended a neighborhood film club where the “screen” was hanging outside on a fence.

Sadly, I just can’t see myself owning a projector, despite some major technological leaps even in the short time since that film club screening. There are a few main reasons, although I’ll try to touch on some of the smaller ones as I go along. No shame if you decide you want a projector, incidentally — a lot of this is purely subjective. And TVs themselves may eventually give way to AR glasses.

Projectors still demand a dark room

Even at the high end

On a feature level, the best projectors are capable of going toe-to-toe with most panel TVs. They use RGB lasers to produce surprisingly bright 4K images, enough to support dynamic HDR standards like Dolby Vision and HDR10+. They’re even quite usable in daylight.

“Usable” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, however. You’re still compromising quality, potentially forcing you to shrink the image area to maintain brightness at a level you enjoy. And the cheaper the projector, the more likely you are to suffer from images being washed out in any light, i.e. losing contrast and saturation. To get your money’s worth, you still need to watch a projector in a dim or completely darkened room.

Obviously, that’s not much of an issue if your home theater is just that — a place where everyone gathers for movie night. For many people, though, their TV is as much for watching daytime YouTube videos as it is Indiana Jones or Hereditary, and even the cheapest mini-LED TV is going to smoke a projector in that department. Meanwhile, MicroLED and RGB mini-LED TVs are on the verge of becoming mainstream. We’re talking products with dynamic contrast ratios anywhere from 1,000,000:1 to 10,000,000:1, or even higher. If you want flexibility, a panel TV is the way to go.

Image size is increasingly irrelevant

The raison d’être for projectors is vanishing

Speaking of Austin, an anecdote I keep going back to is my first-ever smart TV, which I bought for an apartment back in 2011. It was only 40 inches, but still heavy enough that I could barely carry it up three flights of stairs by myself in the Texas heat. And while I got it at a discount, the set was normally $1,200 new. A projector still made a certain amount of sense at the time if you wanted a gigantic image.

In 2024, however, I was able to buy a 65-inch mini-LED TV that was not only hundreds of dollars cheaper, but actually lighter than that 40-inch starter. For about $1,200 today, you could buy a 98-inch QLED — a panel so huge that there might not even be enough space on your wall for it. There might be some compromises in features to reach that pricetag, but given that a comparable projector could easily cost more — perhaps twice as much — the choice is non-existent for many buyers. Few football fans are racing to buy projectors for the Super Bowl.

Projectors will forever hold an edge in being able to reach the largest image sizes, but 98 inches is already so enormous that apart from wall space considerations, it can be too large for your field of view. In my own living room, simply jumping to 85 inches would probably be uncomfortable, forcing me to dart my eyes around constantly. I don’t need a 120-inch image, much less 300.

The economics are liable to slide even further in favor of panels in the next decade. While a 120-inch TV currently costs more than any projector, that price could be slashed dramatically. Who knows — as soon as 2030, people might be installing whole-wall displays like the kind Ellen Ripley sat in front of in Aliens.

Projectors are less convenient in many ways

The costs don’t stop at the projector

In the promo images for projectors, you’ll sometimes be greeted by happy couples or families sitting in front of extremely tidy living rooms, treating the tech as if it was the easiest thing in the world to mount and watch. You’ll even see similar images with people outdoors — recently, one image I came across involved a couple watching a movie out in the desert.

The reality is that any projector setup that can compete with a panel TV is going to demand extra money and work. Yes, you can project on your wall or a sheet if you have to, but the best image quality comes from dedicated screens that are perfectly flat and block ambient light. On top of that, it can take time to mount and calibrate a projector for ideal viewing, and you’ll almost certainly need to wire external speakers using long cables, at least if you want sound to be powerful and coming from the right direction.

Panel TVs can come with their own inconveniences, such as the need for an entertainment center or wall mounting, but they’re otherwise plug-and-play. That’s almost a problem, sometimes — people can deprive themselves of the best possible experience because they don’t feel a need to tweak image settings or even buy a soundbar. That’s the kind of trouble you want to have, given that the screen alone for a projector can cost anywhere from several hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Newer technologies may be about to crush them

How about a 100-inch display on the train?

Credit: Apple

I’ve already touched on the impending transition to MicroLED and RGB mini-LED TVs, both of which annihilate consumer projectors in terms of brightness and contrast. Something I haven’t mentioned, though, is their incredible color accuracy. Samsung claims that its RGB mini-LED TVs can cover 100% of the BT.2020 color gamut — something even the best OLEDs have failed to achieve so far. In practice, your eyes can’t actually register all those colors, yet home theater diehards are no doubt drooling over the idea of perfect reproduction.

Looking even further ahead, projectors might be rendered obsolete by something out of leftfield: AR glasses. Now obviously, no one’s sitting down to watch Dune in Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses, but it may only be a few years until something with the power and battery life of the Apple Vision Pro becomes cheaper and more portable. At that point, it’ll become possible for you to simulate images as large as what projectors are capable of, anywhere you go. Imagine watching a 100-inch screen on your ride into Manhattan — with access to your email and chats at the same time.

The only serious hurdle here is the social aspect. Both projectors and conventional TVs are naturally easier to share with friends and family, since there’s just one hardware setup to pay for, and no one has to wear anything. Yet if AR glasses eventually replace smartphones the way companies like Apple and Google are angling for, the point might be moot. We’ll be syncing videos across devices everybody owns, and may already be wearing when they visit your house.