HD4000 Projector Review: Summary, Pros, Cons

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Art Feierman

The Mitsubishi HD4000 rates our Hot Product award for...

Solid performance as a widescreen, portable, business projector, and also for it's capabilities as a bright projector for the home.

The HD4000 isn't for everyone, but should find a ready market in both business and home sectors.

As a business projector, the HD4000 is one of only a handful of affordable widescreen projectors (the HD4000 sells for under $2500) to reach the market.

Although it tested out noticeably below it's claimed 2000 lumens (as many projectors do), it has plenty of brightness for handling small and medium sized rooms, and can handle the typical conference room with full florescent lighting on 5 and 6 foot screens. Of course it can handle audiences of up to 150+ people on larger screens with modest to moderate lighting.

It's widescreen XGA (WXGA) native capability makes it an excellent match for today's popular widescreen laptops. It's 6.5 pound weight and reasonable footprint make it very viable for frequent portable use, and it's features make it suitable for ceiling mounting as well.

Click enlarge. So close. There are also a great many applications where a widescreen format is desirable, including spreadsheet use, displaying messages, and any other case where longer width is advantageous. The WD4000 can work well with traditional (4:3) aspect ratio computers that have the capabilities of outputting widescreen, or, of course the HD4000 will work fine with a standard XGA or higher resolution source.

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The HD4000 also has a viable place many home users. It compromises in a couple of areas, compared to dedicated home theater projectors, most notably the slow color wheel (2x) which means more people will notice the rainbow effect, and it has some posterization noise visible when the image pans across very bright areas.

The Mitsubishi HD4000's strengths easily outweigh any weaknesses. This projector is very suitable for those needing a home solution, that is significantly brighter than the traditional home theater projector. The HD4000 has two to three times the lumens of most dedicated home theater projectors. If that isn't impressive enough, the HD3000 has excellent color handling plus good black levels and shadow details. As a result, this projector will do a respectable job for traditional movie viewing, and better for sports and general TV viewing. Gamers should like its brightness too, although they really don't have need for a widescreen solution.

The HD4000's brightness, does a respectable job on the image, despite a room bright enough to easily sit and read a book.