Acer H7550ST Projector Review - Picture Quality 2

Posted on April 13, 2017 by Nikki Zelinger

Sports and General HDTV Viewing with the H7550ST Projector

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Pretty good! The projector, does, however, lack CFI, aka "creative frame interpolation" or "smooth motion," which is desirable (but hardly critical) for watching sports. Since this is a home entertainment projector, meant for viewing HDTV and sports programming, it seems silly that this feature was passed on by Acer. Movie aficionados would generally not use CFI for much of anything, but someone buying a low-cost home entertainment, DLP projector is probably going to be watching sports and therefore would benefit from CFI. This is not an uncommon practice, however, as the lack of CFI is a quality many projectors at this price point share.

That said, I found HDTV and sports viewing to be rather decent on the H7550ST. Good color (a slight edge toward red tones in some scenes) and a sharp image made this projector an enjoyable experience. I primarily stream from Netflix (the Breaking Bad photo was taken from Netflix), but I thought the cable image looked just as good as it does when streaming. This projector would definitely be a step up from an LCD TV, with the sheer size of the image that you can get with a projector providing an unbeatable advantage.

H7550ST Dark Shadow Detail

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In Standard mode, no adjustments, the dark shadow detail of the H7550ST is okay. Not the best of all projectors of this price range, but pretty good. In the images above, you'll see three photos of Katniss and Rue, again from the H7550ST, BenQ HT3050 and Epson Home Theater 2040. The HT3050 beats the H7550ST, again, this time in terms of dark shadow detail. It's decent enough as you are watching and you're unlikely to notice any major issues with detail in dark scenes. If you tweak the brightness, you'll be able to squeeze out a bit more detail, which can make the dark shadow detail just as good as these other two projectors. Bottom line - the H7550ST's dark shadow detail is "good enough" for the price.

Acer H7550ST Overall Picture Quality

The H7550ST is a contender as one of the best sub-$1000 projectors on the market when considering overall Picture Quality, though it's definitely not the very best. As a home entertainment projector costing $999, it has very good color handling. I typically like to have Brilliant Color turned on, as it gives the image extra lumens and pop. With Brilliant Color turned off, it's still decent but not at the level Brilliant Color provides.

With a little tweaking of brightness, contrast, gamma, etc., you can get a fantastic picture out of this little projector. As with all projectors, you will get better color and picture quality in a fully darkened room rather than one with ambient light, but the projector still handles that very well. The color controls however, are not as capable as some others, so trying to get that last 5% of color accuracy, probably isn't in the cards.

The Acer is more home entertainment, than say, the BenQ HT3050, which is similarly bright but has better black level performance, and calibrates better (not that most owners of projectors in this price range are going to spend hundreds for a professional calibration). Although that BenQ still doesn’t have great black levels it’s more the serious projector while the Acer is more the fun projector - including gaming, where the Acer has less input lag. Also remember that the street price on the Acer is lower, pricing it between BenQ’s HT2050 and HT3050.