This is a sponsored post and was made possible by Vankyo. The actual content and opinions are the sole views of the author who maintains editorial independence even when an article is sponsored.
After years of projectors being uniformly high-end, high-priced items, in recent years the lower segments of the market (where you and I shop) have become increasingly densely populated with choices. There are plenty of companies that sell Full HD projectors with high-brightness bulbs and crisp, large screens for not too much money.
Of course, when a technology becomes affordable, but not cheap, it becomes difficult to spot the good stuff among the chaff. Vankyo makes a name for itself for its budget-friendly, rugged and decent quality projectors, and their new Vankyo Performance V630 is no exception.
The Vankyo Performance V630 is a full-featured, affordable HD projector, part of its Premium V range. designed to look great in your home.
It's a beautiful projector, a bit retro in fact, with fabric panels on the front and back to decorate the surface. This is not an ugly, technical article like some are. Setup is easy, just plug and play. You can either use the buttons on the remote or on the top of the projector to turn it on.
Let's get down to business:brightness. It is a very bright projector. The website says it's 6000 lux, and although I have no way of verifying that, I can believe it. In a daylight-lit room, the screen was clear and bright. Even in a room at night with all the lights on, you can still see the screen very clearly.
The sound is pretty good too. There are apparently a pair of 5W speakers inside the case, and these are very good quality and quite loud. Obviously these are not Hi-Fi speakers, and of course they will distort if you overload them with loud sound at maximum volume, which tends to rattle the case. But for normal people who watch movies in their living room, the volume and quality are sufficient.
A very nice feature is the digital keystone, adjustable via the remote. The manual trapezoidal dial behind the focus wheel only addresses up/down angle distortion caused by the projector not being directly above the screen. (This adjustment should be avoided to keep the top and bottom image sharp.) Digital Keystone rotates the image digitally to correct top/bottom and left/right corner distortion, and that way you won't don't lose focus by tilting the lens.
Some people are needlessly obsessed with fan noise in projectors, reviews on Amazon are full of that, so here's the truth:you need to have fans in projectors because the lamps get very hot. Fan noise on this device is about 50dB, average and quieter than some. For context, a quiet room has a background hum of about 30dB, and most movies played through the speakers will be in the 50-80dB range anyway, depending on how loud your movies are. . So you won't hear the fan, and even in the quietest parts, how quickly you turn it off is amazing.
The rear USB output jack is very useful. You can maintain a charge on a phone or laptop that you play in the projector by plugging it in here. Also, I managed to run a Raspberry Pi2 on it and play movies in the projector, saving an outlet.
Are there any negative points? Well, I thought I noticed a very slight frame shift with some videos, almost imperceptible, on scenes that move quickly from side to side. Also, I'm pretty sure it has an acrylic lens, which means that while it's sharp, it's not the sharpest. You have to be realistic, though, I think in a projector in this price range, these sorts of minor issues are quite excusable, as technical compromises have to be made to keep the price down.
It's an easy to use, very watchable and good sounding projector that's versatile and easy to place in a room and (let's say it again) has a bright and easily visible screen even in rooms well lit. . I would even say that it is a good TV replacement. the Vankyo Performance V630 is a bright, full-featured HD projector with nice speakers and good looks for not a lot of money. It costs just $269.99 and is available direct from the manufacturer and on Amazon.
