Samsung SP-H710AE Projector Review - General Performance 4

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Art Feierman

There are a lot of aspects of the SP-H710AE's functionality and performance to consider. Below is menu that will allow you to jump to any of the topics in this section.

Please note, these "anchors" immediately below will not normally be operational for the first 12-24 hours after the review is posted. Until they are activated, please scroll down the page to find the topics. -art

SP-H710AE Calibration

Click to enlarge. So close

Forget it! The out of box performance is definitely the best I have seen yet, in terms of being "on the money" not even the $15,000+ InFocus SP777 or the $19995 SIM2 C3X looked more natural out of the box.

Yes you can have this projector professionally calibrated to perfectly match your room and screen, but for most of us, the real appeal of the SP-H710AE, is that it is the one projector I have seen under $5000 that really looks like it has just been professionally calibrated when you first turn it on.

After measuring my color balance, and brightness - I changed nothing! Here you can see a screen shot of the default Movie 1 setting (Theater), and the color balance (diamond) is almost perfectly centered over the target!

These are the Movie1/Theater color temperatures measured:

Click Image to Enlarge


100 IRE	6399
80 IRE	6369
50 IRE	6336
30 IRE	6240

So, my full measurable range from 30 IRE to 100 IRE, all within 160K temperature. Overall, slightly below the 6500K ideal, but that slight a shift is barely detectable, even if you know what you are looking for. More important than the slightly lower than 6500K, is the consistancy of the color temperature. Many projector shift significantly from dark grays to light grays, and many more have a very significant shift (sometimes up to 1000K, just between 80 and 100 IRE).

Overall, the Samsung is the projector for the purist. Saying that, many will want to tweak - good luck to you - and a few will have it professionally calibrated to their room/screen, etc.

That said, it is the out of the box image quality that makes the Samsung a special projector and one that will appeal to many purists, despite the lower advertised contrast ratio's and black levels.