Review on Optoma UHD38: Ultimate Gaming Projector with True 4K UHD, 4000 Lumens, & Enhanced Gaming Mode by Bobby Posner

This is not a 4K projector. This is a 1080P projector that uses the Texas Instruments XPR chip to mirror the 1080P image four times at half a pixel from the original. You can get away with calling it 4K because there are at least eight million pixels on the screen. You need a "native 4K projector". They are all expensive, with the cheapest as of 11/2020 costing around $5,000. Every "4K" projector in this price range ($1,000 to $3,000) uses a form of mirroring called pixel shifting. The online projector gurus who claim you can't see the difference are wrong, at least if your screen is as big as mine - 125 inches. I'm sitting 12-13 feet away and can easily distinguish the pixels in the text. The reason this type of 4K projector isn't good, well, one of the many reasons is the pixel size. A 4K pixel should be small, four times smaller than a 1080P image pixel for the same screen size. Just like your iPhone's retina display. The pixels are tiny, so you can't see them individually even from a distance of 15 cm. With a pixel shift projector you get huge 1080P pixels, there's just more of it. It doesn't give you smooth edges around text or anything else that requires fine detail. This gives you a lot of large jagged pixels that overlap, blurring the image. Move back more than 15 feet and the image is soft but not pixelated. This is the first major problem with this projector. Problem number two: the lens. There is a large amount of chromatic aberration (purple or green fringing). This happens when a bright light is next to a hard dark line. See the photos I've attached. Even some good camera lenses have this problem, and photographers use computer software to eliminate it in post-processing. You can't remove it with your projector unless you blur the image, then you have a whole new problem, the image is blurry. Correction - higher quality glass and special glass processing to eliminate it. Also in relation to the quality of the lens - sharpness. This lens has a lot of softness around the edges. You have to decide where you want your screen to be sharp and know that everything else will be blurry to some extent. A few other images I've attached illustrate how when one corner of the screen is sharp, the opposite corner is soft. This is especially annoying when playing video games on the new PS5 and Xbox. Like all zoom lenses, they are sharpest towards the wide end, so zooming should be avoided whenever possible. See photo. I zoomed out the projected image so you can see how much red there is. I could not remove this with the available color settings. Problem number three: black level. The claimed black level of this projector is absurd. That's far from what they say. I'm a proponent of black level as it makes a huge difference in image quality. Compare my 65 inch LG OLED screen to this one and you will be amazed at what an OLED display can do. It's not realistic to compare the two technologies here, but it's useful to know what an image should look like to know how bad it is. You can turn on all the fancy settings, but it won't do much other than make the fan very loud. Dynamic black adjustment is the most annoying because the projector can't process the image and adjust the black level fast enough for your eye not to notice. The result is a screen that always looks like it's adjusting its brightness. Problem number four: HDR10. It's so bad that it's best to keep it away. Simply turn on the bright mode for the lamp, which consumes the lamp faster, and adjust the brightness, gamma, and contrast accordingly. Too bad this feature doesn't work well. You will notice this immediately and think your settings are disabled. This is a projector. Problem number five: the remote control. That's kind of the worst part. The only interaction we have with the projector once installed is the remote control. So why do companies so often skimp on a good remote control? LG figured this out with their OLED TVs, and they offer a 'magic remote control' that's really excellent. The remote control with this device will frustrate and blind you endlessly. Push a button and 30 LEDs will light up your entire room (see photo). This is a really big nuisance in dark rooms as it hurts your eyes, no kidding. It's like looking at the high beams of an SUV's halogen lights. The remote control is bad. Problem number six: split screen. There seems to be an issue with the Optima showing two different quality images side by side - see photos. These are intermittent problems that appear from time to time when the projector is powered on. To do this, you need to restart the device and cross your fingers that everything is fine after a restart. I can go on and on about the issues with this projector. I thought that at more than twice the price of my BenQ HT2050A I would get a significant increase in picture quality, but it's actually a step down. I'm really amazed at how bad this is. Regardless of the calibration settings I made. Works over HDMI fiber. Just do not. Buy a normal 1080P projector at a fair price or a true native 4K projector from JVC or Sony at a high price but it will last another ten years. These fake 4K projectors from all brands (BenQ, Optoma, Epson, etc.) just don't justify their price in the slightest.