Optoma UHD65 4K Home Theater Projector Review – The Hardware

UHD65 Hardware Overview

The UHD65 is a medium sized home theater projector.  Measuring 19.6 inches wide, 13 deep, and 6 inches high, it’s finished primarily in black – glossy on top, mat on the sides, with a nice piece of brushed silver trim.  It probably won’t win any design awards for style, but it looks good. Exhaust venting is on the left front corner, if you are facing the projector’s front.

The front feet are adjustable.  The lens is slightly recessed, with manual focus accomplished by rotating the lens edge.  There’s an IR sensor for the remote control on the front, to the right of the lens.

The other lens controls are on the top hidden behind a large door that runs the width of the projector.

The control panel is toward the rear of the UHD65, on the left side, when facing the front of the projector.

All the inputs and the two rear facing four watt speakers are located on the back of the projector.

UHD65 Zoom Lens

The manual lens has a 1.6:1 throw ratio.  To adjust the focus, rotate the lens barrel from the front of the projector.  To adjust the zoom lens, open the top door, where, inside, there’s a ring type adjustment for the manual zoom.  Directly behind that – toward the back, is the manual lens shift dial. 1.6:1 is a good amount of zoom range, some projectors have less, none have more than 2.1:1 zooms.

What the UHD65 doesn’t have is motorized features, and without those, there’s no Lens Memory.  Lens memory let’s you save multiple zoom and lens shift settings, so you can, by the touch of a button, switch back and forth to different image size and aspect ratio.

Lens Memory allows one to use and fill completely a wide screen, such as my own 2.35:1 screen which matches most wide screen movies.  Then, switch back for 16:9 content – which will leave a letter box (dark areas on the far left and right).

Lens Memory allowed widescreen users to fill the screen, without it, there’s always using an anamorphic lens and motorized sled.  That might cost more than this projector, which is why Lens Memory is a coveted feature.  But at this price point, it’s only found on Epson projectors (and an old Panasonic, that is still hanging around.)

One complaint!  The UHD65 lens and light path leak a lot of light.  You’ll spot it hitting the ceiling in front of the projector, if you are ceiling mounted.  I’m testing with it on a table top and the amount of leaked light is quite significant, although not enough to impact the picture.

I’d say it’s definitely a lot of light leakage for a projector at this price point.

Inputs and Connectors

Let’s take a look:

Starting from the left, there’s a Kensington lock slot for security, followed by the power cord receptacle.  For wired networking there’s an RJ45 connector for use with CAT5/6 cables.  No projector is really complete without the traditional RS232 serial port for old school command and control.

Now we get to the inputs, starting with a pair of HDMI inputs.  HDMI 1 is on the left, and is the older HDMI 1.4, while HDMI 2 supports HDMI 2.0, and the matching HDCP 2.2 copy projection that is required to play those 4K Blu-ray UHD movies.

There’s even a traditional VGA port for analog computer output.  Of course, most things these days use HDMI, but should you have an old PC at home, you are covered.

After a space, there is a pair of stereo audio jacks one for input, one for output.  A pair of USBs (one marked with power), a digital audio jack, and lastly a 12 volt screen trigger.

Next up is the control panel.

UHD65 Control Panel

There are two indicator lights (in addition to the light on the power button (blue for on, red for off/standby).

Below those six buttons are two larger ones, the lit up one is the power button, the source button to its right.  That’s all there is, and all that’s truly needed.