LG CF181D Projector: Pros, Cons, and Typical Capabilities

LG CF181D Projector: Pros, Cons, and Typical Capabilities

LG CF181D Projector: Pros

• A dazzling 900 lumens in “best” mode, makes handling larger screens easy, and dynamic
• Almost 1400 “brightest” mode lumens, and pretty good color to boot – great for sports viewing or fighting some ambient light.
• Excellent color, post calibration, especially skin tones which really do look a touch better than some very good projectors
• Reasonably good “enough” black levels, though not great
• Better than average placement flexibility with 1.8:1 zoom and lens shift
• Dynamic iris, though not producing the blackest blacks, does offer pretty smooth operation
• Iris can be put in manual mode, if projector too bright, but iris can not perform dynamically, so black levels not as good.
• Offers creative frame interpolation (some limits)
• Takes 24fps film to 48fps (2:2 pull-down)
• Excellent remote control
• Overall, a most impressive picture, plus all those lumens make for the CF181D’s superior price performance

LG CF181D Projector: Cons

• CFI has some jerky artifacts when using with 24fps film content. Not recommended for movie viewing
• Black level performance, while pretty good, would need to be better still to compete with the best in the LG’s price range
• Documentation – pretty basic, though generally helpful, but lacks good descriptions of many features. For example, Real Cinema On, 24fps 1080 becomes 48fps. Set it Off and it uses 3:2 pull-down. It’s not explained in the manual.
• No anamorphic lens support
• Menus, otherwise logical, pack too many items per menu, requiring scrolling, and making it harder to find features
• Changing out the lamp requires unmounting from a ceiling mount
• Overscan not operational with 1080 source material, and no edge masking either (bummer)
• Could be a little quieter (23 db in eco-mode, probably about 27-28 at full power?)
• Despite 1920×1080 native resolution, does not support data resolutions of 1600×1200 UXGA, or 1920×1200 WUXGA.

LG CF181D Projector: Typical Capabilities