Best Gaming Projectors

By Diane Jones

There’s nothing quite like the immersive experience of gaming using a projector. Video games have evolved to the point of portraying images that look more real than actual people on video, the skin tones, hair, and the texture of clothing all have become so realistic it is sometimes hard to tell the difference. With such stunning advances in rendering abilities, it’s almost a crime to play these games on a tiny 60” LCD TV. 4K or not, the size of the display really does matter and playing on a small screen really doesn’t do the video game justice.

Playing on a 100” (or larger) screen allows the player to be fully immersed in the world of the game. Whether you are playing in first-person shooter mode, third-person RPG (role player games), or any other style of gameplay, there’s nothing quite like having your screen extend to the edge of your peripheral vision. Until we reach the days of Ready Player One levels of immersion, projector gaming is as good as it gets…and that’s pretty darn good!

What Makes a Projector Good For Gaming?

We think there are three main factors that make a projector great for gaming: input lag, High Dynamic Range, and the projector's audio capabilities. Let's look at why we think these factors are important.

Input Lag

The most important factor to consider when purchasing a gaming projector is input lag. Input lag is an important term in the world of projector gaming. It is a word that relates to the gaming speed performance on projectors – the time between when the gaming system sends out its signal, to the time it is received by the projector, and is measured in milliseconds. The range of acceptable input lag speeds are as high as 50ms to as low as 16ms and there are three categories these speeds fall into: Acceptable, Good, and Optimal.

Acceptable input lag the category of the casual gamer. These are the gamers who do it for fun, and do not compete. They’ll typically stay offline, and play games with their friends and family in person, or by themselves. These are your Nintendo Switch gamers, RPG players, and first-person shooter types who don’t spend much time playing against other gamers online.

Good input lag is in the 33ms to 40ms range. Any projector that is within these speeds will be suitable for all but the most competitive gamers.

Good input lag at 33ms to 40ms, will put you behind just over 1 frame per second on a 30fps game, and 2 frames behind on a 60fps game. This isn’t enough to make a difference for most people – again, unless highly competitive, such as a career gamer type, or those who play a lot of online maps.

Anything below that 33ms mark can be considered “really good” or “great,” but truly excellent input lag is 16ms to 20ms, with 16ms being the aim for manufacturers who are positioning their model as a gaming projector.

Resolution and 4K Gaming with HDR

HDR is a feature that appears on many 4K UHD projectors on the market. The acronym stands for “High Dynamic Range,” and refers to a type of image processing in 4K capable projectors and TVs that saturates the colors to become more vibrant, with more “pop and wow” factor. It does so by expanding the contrast and color, often significantly. On most projectors, HDR will considerably reduce the brightness of whatever color mode it is being used on.

The list of projectors that have the ability to handle 4K games with HDR gets significantly shorter than the list of projectors that have HDR. This has to do with the type of HDMI port that is used on projectors that can handle 4K gaming with HDR, and those that cannot. To project a game in 4K HDR at 60 fps, the projector requires an HDMI port that is 18 Ghz.

Audio Performance

Projectors aren’t necessarily considered the pinnacle of audio performance, and for good reason, they simply don’t match the power an AV sound system or a soundbar can offer in a small box, but that’s not to say that they can’t offer compelling audio performance.

For many projectors, the different gaming modes manipulate how audio is delivered from the projector. A great example of this in action is with role playing mode, which better amplifies deep bass from the projector, making monster roars and 50 caliber sniper rounds more guttural and impactful. Areas like voice are enhanced when using sports mode so the player can better understand what the announcer is saying in the game. Whereas surround effects are more accurately placed when users access first-person shooter mode, which helps you better locate where other players are in relation to you in the game, making you a more effective player.

The size of the screen certainly helps a lot, but so does the ability to intelligently adjust the projector’s video and audio output to best match each game’s performance. Previously there were many obstacles that made projectors not as ideally suited to gaming as monitors or TVs, we’re pleased to see many—dare we say all—of these barriers adequately removed.

Our Picks for the Best Gaming Projectors

Below is the list of projectors we at Projector Reviews would work best for gaming. We will continue to add to this list as more projectors become available that we think would enhance your gaming experience.

BenQ X3000i

To see all the differences between this BenQ X3000i 4LED gaming projector and the BenQ X1300i 4LED gaming projector (below) and to learn more about the X3000i, please read the full review here.

One of a few important items to us gamers is input lag. As far as input lag goes, BenQ states 0-20ms is a high speed, 20-40ms is fast, 40-62ms is slow, and anything lower than 63ms is very slow. The X3000i has a BenQ rated input lag of 4K/60Hz @ 16.67ms, 1080p/240Hz @ 4.16ms, 1080p/120Hz @ 8.33ms, and 1080p/60Hz @ 16.67ms.

Check out the full review of the BenQ X3000i.

BenQ X1300i

The X1300i is a 120Hz 4 LED projector with a 3000 ANSI lumens rating, according to BenQ, and a 5,000,000:1 published contrast ratio. The X1300i also includes smart features via its Android TV OS. This projector makes for an amazing gaming experience for both your eyes and ears.

Check out the full review here: BenQ X1300i Review

Optoma UHD50X

The Optoma UHD30 is 100% identical to the UHD50X from a design point of view. One critical technological difference between these two projectors is that the UHD30 has a 1x zoom vs. the UHD50’s 1.3x zoom. Both projectors are excellent home cinema projectors. Both offer high refresh rates and low input lag. You will have to decide if the UHD50X is worth the $300 price difference (this is at MSRP) for a better lens that provides 1.3X zoom.

To read the full review of the Optoma UHD50X, click here: Optoma UHD50X review

Optoma UHD35

The UHD35X supports HDR (High Dynamic Range) with provides the gamer with the ability to identify objects in the extreme bright and dark areas on the screen to keep from getting killed by another player. Projectors like the UHD35 are optimized to work better with gaming consoles and high-performance gaming computers. The unit's excellent gaming performance is a result of being able to display a higher dynamic range of colors, higher resolution, and much faster refresh rates.

To read the full review, click here: Optoma UHD35 review

BenQ TK700STi

n addition, it should be noted that this gaming projector comes with unique game modes for FPS (First-Person Shooter), RPG (Role-Playing Game), and SPG (Sports Game) gaming modes with audio, visual, and optimized latency settings for each type of game.

The BenQ TK700STi is bundled with the QS0I Android TV dongle which provides access to over 5,000 Android TV apps including YouTube and Amazon Prime Video. The smart features are integrated seamlessly, and the menus are easy to navigate.

We believe the BenQ TK700STi is a great value. It is bright, delivered an accurate image and its lightning-fast response time made it a joy to game on. We also appreciated the simple plug-and-play capability of a smart projector. We liked the projector so much that we have awarded the BenQ TK700STi, Projector Reviews, “Highly Recommended” award.

To read the full review, click here: BenQ TK700Sti