Acer PH530 Home Theater Projector Review - General Performance

The User Memory is my biggest single complaint with the PH530 home theater projector. Here's the problem:

On first viewing, like with most home theater projectors, the Acer does not have great "out of the box" color balance. It needs to be "calibrated" at least a basic grayscale balance, to get color temp to 6500K for movies, and to make sure "green" isn't over or under represented.

So, when I did that, I had to change the R, G, and B settings on the Color Menu. So far, so good. That moved me from Theater Display mode, to User.

Then, I wanted to get TV/HDTV/Sports looking good. Again, a grayscale balance, but for the coolor color temp associated with broadcast. This required me to change the R, G, and B settings. Again, no matter where I started (let's say Video mode), I end up in User.

That means the original settings I needed for best movie watching are lost.

The solution - write down the correct RGB (and other settings) for movies, and also for any other modes, because the projector will only remember the last one you used.

And that is a pain in the butt.https://www.projectorreviews.com/acer/ph530/index.php

So, if you really do want your PH530 to look as good as it can, you'll be going into the menus, and making adjustments every time you switch from movies to most TV, and worse, you might need slightly different settings for working with some ambient light, as well as in a fully darkened environment.

Too much work for me, and the PH530's colors are too "off" out of the box to ignore, and still expect to have good skin tones and natural colors.

There are some other home theater projectors with a single User area, or "almost" similar limitations, however, those are usually source specific. That is, they either recognize the input (HDMI, vs component), or more typically, recognize that it is a different device (can tell the difference, say between your Blu-ray player, your regular DVD player, and your cable box). With these, you can then have one set of settings for your movies from Blu-ray player, another setting for your cable box, etc.

But the Acer is doing none of that. It's a shame, and in my opinion, this particular lack of flexibility, is the single greatest flaw of the Acer PH530, and almost certainly the primary reason I cannot grant it our Hot Product Award.