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Acer H9500BD Projector - Performance 2

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Art Feierman

Acer H9500BD 3D Brightness

Unfortunately, the Acer seems to lose more brightness when switching to its one 3D mode, than any of the other 3D projectors. Comparing it to the Epson Home Cinema 3010 in the Epson's 3D Dynamic mode does have you wondering where all the brightness went.

Consider that there's only a 200 lumen difference in their ratings. In 3D, however, the difference seems much brighter. The glasses and balance of the color which includes how the background appears without the glasses, is sort of yellowish green, and vanishes with the active LCD glasses.

Acer H9500BD Sharpness

The H9500BD looks very nicely sharp. Optics seemed fine, a nice clear image. No lens gives you a perfectly focused image from center to corners, but the Acer seems fairly typical, with little to note. As a single chip DLP Projector, there are no convergence issues, unlike LCD and LCoS projectors, which helps keep the Acer nice and sharp.

Comparison images:

Top left: Acer H9500BD, Top Center - Optoma HD33, Top Right - Mitsubishi HC4000.

2nd row left: Epson Home Cinema 3010, center: Viewsonic Pro8200, Right: BenQ W1200

Acer H9500BD
Optoma HD33
Mitsubishi HC4000
Epson Home Cinema 3010
Viewsonic Pro8200
BenQ W1200

Acer H9500BD: Bottom Line Sharpness

In this price range, the Acer H9500 projector is more than fine. Digital content looks really sharp, and of course there are enough artifacts in movies (starting with film grain), to make small differences in sharpness harder to notice.

Bottom line? Sharpness won't be a factor!

Light Leakage

A little out the side venting. Should not be an issue, unless you are sitting with eyes level, and alongside the projector. (In which case, if you are close, the heat of the fan blown exhaust will be a much bigger problem)!

As I write this, I admit, I never took a really close look for through-the-lens light leakage, but I'm confident that there is no noteworthy issue, or I should have spotted it.

Image Noise

DLP's tend to be a touch more noisy, and I'd say that for 2D, the Acer works well enough. I say that because I stuck to Brilliant Color, which also tends to magnify such things. No overt problems here, but not the cleanest around - usually an LCD.

As a well under $2000 home entertainment projector, let's add this item to the list that typical owners simply don't notice, and should they, they don't care.

I mean who's looking at image noise when watching Cars 2, 3D with the kids?

Consider this too: The amount of digital noise, from compression and decompression of cable and satellite is at least a whole magnitude larger! Same likely for almost any download. That means only Blu-ray discs and your own 3D content from your 3D camera or camcorder, are going to be clean enough for you to even begin to worry about the image noise.

Seriously!

Audible Noise

Not bad for a DLP. As with most, projectors it's fan.

Like the Epson Home Cinema 3010, you can hear the dynamic iris working at times. Like the Epson, most people won't notice unless there's no sound, except at start up, and during source changes and who cares then.

I'd put the fan noise to be slightly higher than the Epson, but like the Epson again, these are not an issue for casual viewing. There are folks out there who really object to 30 db fan noise, and this one is probably a touch higher.

The good news, for the really noise adverse, is that in low power lamp, the fan gets pretty quiet, and you're only losing about 13% of brightness. (As noted, there is some color shift between high and low power).

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