Acer H6815BD Review

Introduction

The Acer H6815BD is a lamp-based 4K DLP projector that has a claimed maximum brightness of 4,000 lumens and offers support for HDR10.

There’s 3D support for those looking for big screen immersion, while gamers will be delighted by frame rates up to 240Hz on 1080p games and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it input lag of just 8ms. It’s competitively priced as well, but let’s see how it performs in testing…

Availability

The Acer H6815BD is available now, and can be picked up for £649 in the UK, $699 in the US, €799 in Europe, and AU$1,499 in Australia. All these prices are very reasonable for a 4K HDR projector with a solid choice of features, especially in the UK.

Design

• Compact white chassis
• 2 x HDMI 2.0 inputs
• Remote control

The Acer H6815BD looks like the classic DLP at this cheaper end of the market. It’s one step up from a data grade projector in terms of design, with a white plastic chassis, lens offset to right and air vents at the sides. Above the lens are manual zoom and focus controls, while towards to the top rear you’ll find some basic buttons in case you misplace the remote.

At the rear you’ll find the connections, with two HDMI 2.0 inputs on the left hand side, and over the right there’s a USB port for power, an audio out, and an RS3232 connector for serial control.

The included remote control is the kind of small and simple zapper that’s typical for a cheaper DLP projector. It’s sensibly laid out and comfortable to hold, with all the buttons clearly labelled. All the controls you need to setup and operate the H6815BD are included, but as is usual at this price point there’s no backlight for use in the dark.

Features

• Simple installation
• Optional 3D support
• Very low input lag

The Acer H6815BD is a DLP projector, which means it uses a single chipset and a colour wheel to create the images. The upside of this approach is that there are no alignment issues, so the image is pin sharp, but the downside is you can hear the colour wheel whizzing around and some people may see colour flashes or artefacts called rainbows.

This projector has a claimed resolution of 4K, but this is achieved using pixel shifting so technically it’s not native 4K – no matter what DLP creator Texas Instruments says in its marketing. However, the level of detail is exceptional and unless you’re looking at specialist test patterns you won’t be able to tell the difference between this and a native 4K projector. In reality the weak link will be the cheap plastic lens, which is fairly typical for a beamer at this price point.

The H6815BD uses a traditional lamp-based light source, which means it has a maximum claimed brightness of 4,000 lumens. This is good news if you plan on using the Acer in room with white walls or ambient light, but it does mean you’ll need to replace the bulb after 2,000 to 3,000 hours. 

If you thinking of using the beamer instead of a TV you should really be looking at a laser-powered UST projector like the Hisense PL1 or Epson EH-LS650. They’re more expensive, but you get a lot of bang for your buck and they’re still way cheaper than a TV with an 80- to 100-inch screen size.

The H6815BD supports HDR10, and thanks to all that brightness this should look quite punchy. The Acer also supports 3D, although you will need to buy optional active shutter glasses. But if you’re a fan of the third dimension, the bright picture combined with DLP’s superior response times will result in a fantastic 3D experience.

Those super-fast response times also make DLP projectors good choices for gamers, and while the H6815BD is limited to 4K/60Hz because of the HDMI 2.0 inputs, it can deliver 1080p PC games at frame rates up to 240Hz. It’s also has an incredibly low input lag of only 8ms in the game mode.

Finally there’s a mono speaker built-in with 3W of amplification, but you really shouldn’t bother with this for watching films and sport or gaming. You don’t want your favourite blockbuster movie to sound like the audio is coming from a transistor radio, and even a cheap soundbar is going to deliver a far superior sonic performance.

Performance

• Big and bright HDR images
• Decent image accuracy
• Poor black levels

The Acer H6815BD is fairly quick and easy to setup, although installation is less flexible due to the lack of lens shift controls. This basically means you can point it at a white wall or screen and quickly focus the image and zoom the size up or down, but since there are no left/right or up/down shift controls you’ll have to do this by physically moving the projector. There’s also a foot at the front for raising the picture, but this puts the image at an angle creating geometry errors you’ll need to fix with the keystone correction, which in turn introduces additional scaling.

Once you have setup the H6815BD you’ll be rewarded with a solid picture that appears pleasingly sharp and detailed, and obviously very bright. This brightness is great if you’re using the Acer in a normal living room with light coloured walls and windows, and it’s also handy when it comes to delivering HDR that really pops. The colours are reasonably accurate, with grass and skin tones appearing natural, and the colour gamut coverage is excellent for SDR. However, as is normally the case with DLP projectors using a colour wheel the H6815BD can’t reach the wider colour gamut used for HDR. Having said that, the colours did look more vibrant and saturated with HDR content.

I tested this projector in a blacked-out dedicated home cinema, which meant I needed to dial the lumens back quite a bit, otherwise it was too bright. It also revealed the usual weakness of DLP, which is blacks that look more like a dark grey. This is exacerbated by the higher light output raising the black floor, although in a room with a lot reflected light the contrast will be washed out anyway, making this something of a moot point. Acer claims a contrast ratio of 10,000:1 but in reality it’s closer to 2,000:1, which is fairly standard for a DLP beamer.

The other problem with all this brightness is the heat it generates, which requires fans for cooling. The higher the lumens output the louder the fan noise, which can get quite noticeable, especially when combined with the high-pitched whir of the colour wheel. A good sound system will probably drown it out, especially if you’re not sat too close, but film fans looking for a cinema-like experience should consider a beamer designed for home cinemas

The ability of any display to handle HDR effectively depends on its tone mapping, and this is even more important with projectors where the performance is significantly limited. Even a beamer this bright can’t get anywhere near the light output of a TV, so HDR content has to be mapped down to the its inherent brightness and colour gamut. The H6815BD was showing clear signs of clipping or loss of detail in the highlights with HDR10 content, which suggests the tone mapping could be better.

The H6815BD does a pretty good job of delivering SDR content, with natural looking colours, and plenty of brightness. The blacks are still grey, and there’s a lack of fine detail in the shadows, but for the odd movie, TV drama or sporting event the image is very watchable. The same goes for gaming, with the excellent motion handling of DLP and the very low input lag delivering a responsive and fun big screen gaming experience.

The performance with HDR is also generally impressive, despite all the inherent limitations. While some clipping could be seen in test patterns, with actual content like the 4K Blu-ray of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 the picture had plenty of vibrancy and pop. There was no obvious clipping in the highlights on Ego’s planet and the colours appeared lush and saturated, while the image was bursting with detail as well. The blacks remain weak, but the overall big screen picture will doubtless please casual movie fans as they tuck into their popcorn.

Latest deals

Should you buy it?

FAQs