Nobody would anticipate top-tier picture high quality from a projector on the N6 Professional’s worth. However contemplating that context, it does moderately effectively. The menus provide 5 preset image modes with no changes out there, plus one person mode with settings for just a few fundamentals, together with Brightness, Distinction, Saturation, and Colour Temperature. I shortly found that each one the presets misplaced vital shadow element, even in darker areas of vivid scenes, and made it inconceivable to see what was taking place in darkish scenes, leaving Consumer mode as my most popular selection for viewing.
Cranking up the brightness setting (which adjusts black degree) helped, however it nonetheless left an excessive amount of element hidden in our darkest take a look at clips to inform what was taking place. It additionally tended to clean out vivid scenes, so I needed to choose a setting based mostly on how a lot picture high quality I used to be keen to sacrifice in them in change for higher shadow element. Elevating the saturation setting helped counter the washout impact, letting me increase brightness slightly larger than I might have in any other case.
(Credit score: M. David Stone)
The ultimate end result for SDR enter was watchable general. Most individuals would choose it someplace between tolerable and first rate, relying on how vital a watch they’ve. Colour accuracy and distinction are each finest described as adequate. Nonetheless, the darkest scenes in our take a look at suite nonetheless misplaced vital shadow element, making the N6 Professional a poor selection for watching content material with lots of darkish scenes, just like the night time battle episode of Recreation of Thrones. This is not a serious difficulty, since most motion pictures and TV exhibits have few or no scenes which are that darkish.
Xgody says that the N6 Professional’s HDR10 help is thru software program decoding solely, so it was no shock that the participant reported an SDR connection when taking part in 4K HDR discs. As additionally anticipated for software-only help, the projector supplied the identical image modes for HDR and SDR enter, and it stored the identical settings for HDR that I would already made for SDR. Nonetheless, it dealt with the HDR enter moderately effectively. Particularly, it held shadow element much better within the HDR variations of the identical scenes I examined, in each SDR and HDR codecs; I had no issues making out what was taking place. Different features of image high quality have been basically the identical as for SDR typically description, at the very least, however the general high quality was considerably higher.
(Credit score: M. David Stone)
As anticipated for this class of projectors, the N6 Professional affords no 3D help. As for its gaming prowess, that is a non-starter. The enter lag was considerably longer than acceptable for any sport the place response time issues. I measured the enter lag with my Bodnar 4K Lag Tester at 147.8 milliseconds for 1080p/60Hz enter.
Picture brightness for the settings I used, together with the very best energy setting for the brightest picture, was what I anticipate from roughly 400 to 425 lumens. That is lower than the rated 700 lumens, however nonetheless considerably brighter than the roughly 200 lumens typical of the competitors. Utilizing the Society of Movement Image and Tv Engineers (SMPTE) suggestions, that interprets to being appropriate for a roughly 75-to-100-inch, 1.0-gain display screen in a darkish room. In my viewing assessments, it was simply vivid sufficient to fill my 90-inch display screen with lights off for each SDR and HDR enter. In a household room with the lights on at night time, I settled on an 85-inch dimension for a fairly watchable picture that seemed solely barely washed-out.
