Vivitek H5080 - Performance

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Art Feierman

Vivitek H5080 Brightness

The Vivitek H5080 is one of the brighter 1080p home theater projectors out there. Immediately below are the measured lumens of each of the preset modes, (and also the color temperature they produced at 100 IRE) (white)

Vivitek H5080 Projector - Uncalibrated

Lumen Output and Color Temp at 100 IRE (mid zoom)
Movie	1222 @ 7134
Bright	1391 @ 8910
Normal	1226 @ 7118
User 1	1166 @ 7940
User 2	1322 @ 9716
User 3	1169 @ 7949

After doing our calibration of "best mode" we measured User 1218 lumens.That's about as bright a "best mode" we've seen, other than the recent Runco 3 chip DLP projector, recently reviewed.

In "brightest mode", (Bright) post calibration, there was only a modest improvement. The Vivitek measured 1307 lumens. That's a loss of about 80 lumens from the default, but the color improves significantly, though still not as good as "best mode".

The Effect of zoom lens positioning on brightness
Zoom out	1383
Mid-zoom	1391
Zoom in	1378

The lens positioning has virtually no effect. From wide angle to telephoto, the drop was only 1% of brightness, and within the margin of error!

The Effect of low lamp (eco) mode on brightness
Low lamp power for Bright mode	1090 lumens
High lamp power for Bright mode	1391 lumens

That works out to a drop of almost 22%, which is pretty typical.

Brightest Mode

There are times when you need (or want) every last lumen. For this purpose, we look at the brightest modes offered, and do a "quick - calibration" That calibration isn't designed for best color. Brightest modes are often very poor in color. Our goal in "calibrating" that mode, it so make the color respectable, not exceptional, while compromising brightness as little as possible. With most projectors, you could start with a very bright mode, calibrate it for the absolute best color, etc, but when you get it, and measure, it's now no longer brighter than "best mode", in which case, why bother.

Star Trek image from the Optoma HD8600 projector.

Click Image to Enlarge

So, we want bright and good color. Whether that's for watching sports with some lights on or some daylight coming in, or just a good amount of brightness while watching your favorite sitcom, some high quality HDTV content, news, or your favorite vampire show, doesn't really matter.

The Vivitek H5080 does extremely well. With our "quick-cal" the H5080 measured in at 1307 lumens, as previously noted. So, your choices when you need bright, is go with the default, which is very cool - blue, in color temp, go the middle route with improved grayscale balance, for a small drop in lumens, or not even bother worrying about it. That would be to just go with "best mode" which isn't that much less bright than the other two choices.

The Vivitek H5080, definitely has the lumens to fill larger screens. While you don't get a big extra boost in lumens, when switching to "brightest mode", it still is a lot brighter than most.