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Review on ๐ŸŽฅ LG HU70LA 4K UHD Smart Home Theater CineBeam Projector with Amazon Alexa, LG ThinQ AI, and webOS Lite Smart TV (Netflix, Prime Video, and VUDU) by Andre Tenk

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Worth the starting price

I've had this projector for a few days now and it just blew me away. I upgraded from an old Optima HD20 because I wanted 4k HDR and this LG projector offers both. As long as this projector achieves a rated usage of 30,000 hours, I'm perfectly happy. Installation was pretty quick, I used an existing ceiling mount from my old projector. When I first turned on the HU70LA, it recognized that it was upside down and automatically flipped the image, which was nice. I'm projecting onto a 133-inch screen from about 15 feet away and the image is bright enough that it's still viewable in low ambient light in the room. What really stands out, especially with HDR content, is how alive everything looks. The colors are really strong. The projection distance I use is about as far as possible from my screen without making the image too big for my screen. If you have a longer throw, you need a bigger screen. I had to use keystone alignment, it only adjusts vertically, not horizontally (but I only needed vertical keystone correction). LG's webOS is integrated just like their televisions. This is the magic remote control. Magic. I really like the motion control cursor and the smart features of the projector. I didn't think I'd use it often, but it's really handy instead of having to turn on my Xbox or Apple TV. It's also very easy to have different picture presets and switch between them (like a game preset and then a movie preset). CEC works to turn on my receiver, so I only need one remote when streaming stuff from webOS. If you've used webOS on one of their latest TVs, this shouldn't come as a surprise. it's the same great impression. I usually don't like the smooth interpolation of a moving picture in TV or film, but on a projector and such a big screen, I quickly became a fan. Everything about it just feels better. (Not for gaming though, only for consuming video content). The ability to play PC games at 1080p 120Hz is amazing. Part of the reason I chose this model was to play PC games on a big screen and not having to sacrifice a high refresh rate is amazing. I didn't notice any input lag in game mode (although I'm not sure what it is). My only complaint about the picture is that the black levels aren't very good. They're decent, but if you want to see something darker like Batman, the Dark Knight or Mr. Robot, I have to turn up the projector's brightness to really see detail in the dark. This blurs the image a bit, but it's still a big improvement over my old projector. I just created a preset for darker things and switched to it when needed. It would also be nice if the power supply was internal so the projector uses a regular wall plug instead of a power supply, but that's how it seems to me. really picky. In my situation I just tied it to a projector ceiling mount and called it good. It's not as simple as installing it, just plugging the cord into the projector directly from the outlet. Also a small note: make sure you use cables rated for 4k @ 60Hz (18Gbps). I tried it first with an old high speed cable that is only rated for 4k@24hz (10.2 Gbps) and couldn't get 4k content to the projector. When buying such a projector, just pay attention to cables. EDIT: After using this projector for a little over a month, I tried installing the Disney+ app on it but it's not supported. This projector runs webos 3 instead of 4 (you need 4 for newer channels like Disney+). My LG TV bought in 2017 was updated with webos 4 and may get Disney+ so I'm hoping LG will eventually update the projector as well.

Pros
  • Very good price
Cons
  • Incredible piggy bank