I have been using a cheap projector for a year and it has been a great experience.
Altogether the screen/projector bundle was about $1500. For the most part it has been a good experience with some notable exceptions.
This isn’t a review of the projector, since they are highly personal depending on your needs. In fact I have looked at buying a newer projector since I learned what is important to me from having this one.
The biggest problem I have faced is that sometimes it seems to freeze and not respond to commands from the remote. Yes the batteries are charged, but the remote seems to be a weak spot. When this happens I have to manually unplug the power and turn it off and then once it restarts it works normally. This has happened maybe 3 times.
I think this problem is just the particular model that I have. Since I have it plugged in directly to an HDMI cable I think it doesn’t know how to handle the two video cards that my laptop has. So probably when it switches which video card is working automatically it might confuse it. I don’t expect this to happen with a different projector.
Another minor problem is that sometimes it randomly adjusts the keystone. I don’t know why. I don’t change anything like resolution or distance but once a month it will just adjust it when it was perfectly fine. I have to assume this is because the projector itself cost about $600, and the other $900 was the cost of the two screens that I bought as a combo.
One of the screens was useless, but the other was amazing. I used the useless one for 10 months and just recently switched to the one that was amazing. It was a difficult thing to put together. It cost alot of time and pain and effort and I almost got my eye knocked out from a piece that snapped off and almost hit my face. I would not put this kind of screen together again.
Am I happy I bought this combo? Yes. It was a good first attempt to assess what I needed. The next projector I will spend much more money on now that I know what is important to me.
It has been amazing to be able to enjoy the larger picture of movies and shows. It has made playing games at night more fun and is something that has made my eyes feel better as well and be more healthy. I am glad that I bought a projector and I should have bought one earlier to make my eyes healthier.