My experience with a $300 budget projector in India.
After researching for around a month, I decided to buy the Pixpaq Gold Raymastered for INR 26,999 ($300) as the good brands like benq, XGIMI, and optoma are way outside my budget (double to be precise cuz of the import and all those things) and finding a secondhand projector is a headache (in India).
So I either had to save to buy from a good brand or take the risk because I don't think I can wait to save.
Edit: For everyone asking why I didn’t buy the XGIMI vibe one, the main reason is the lower brightness, especially since I am using a 100 to 120 screen. I also need an extra HDMI ARC for my 5.1 speaker system and the vibe one only has a single HDMI port. The raymastered is a newly launched model with better specs and MEMC support. Overall, it just fits my setup much better.
About the projector's performance:
Even though this acts as a 4K monitor and accepts a 4K HDR signal from my PS5 and laptop, this is still a native 1080p projector.
But for 1080p, the quality is really good and is not as low resolution as I imagined.
Try playing high-bitrate 4K movie files to get that theater level quality.
The videos I attached are all shot in a dark room, and the display looks waaay better IRL. https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1K-wL3-wfF8rw0uYAJ7sF29BGwbD9gsFz
Pros:
The brightness is really good. Perfect for a dark room and also okay for a medium lit room.(Claims 3450 ansi but is actually around 1000-1100 ansi lumens)
Short throw ratio. At 9 feet, it projected 120 inches for me.
There are two 15 watt speakers, so the sound is really good.
In game mode, the latency is good enough to play singleplayer games on my ps5, but it's not ideal for competitive games imo.
The colours are really good, as the HDR is working as I expected (most of the brands in this price range have a gimmick HDR, which is basically sdr).
Cons:
The autofocus and auto keystone don't work properly, and I have to manually adjust them, which takes forever man.
The 120hz VRR, which the company claims, is fake and is actually MEMC, which smoothens the motion (which is great for games and sports btw and high frame rate movies like Avatar).
Laggy Android OS and no Google TV.
Mounting it to the ceiling is difficult.
The contrast ratio is not that good as claimed.
The customer support is okish, and I have a 1 year warranty so no problem there.
And for the conclusion, I recommend this projector for watching HDR movies and ps5 gaming.