Optoma UHZ50+ review

Even though it might be optimised for gaming, the Optoma UHZ50+ has enough video tricks up its sleeve to qualify as the centrepiece of a high-calibre home theatre too. HDMI with eARC, USB ports and a WiFi dongle that gives access to a basic app store, a built-in speaker for quick games or news check and some amount of vertical lens shift capability. Zoom and focus rings let you dial and lock in just the right image size on your screen and we managed to get an 100in image from a distance of 13ft. 

Once you get the geometry right, the UHZ50+ does offer a magnitude of user-adjustable settings that allow you to tweak contrast, brightness, gamma, colour and motion to your heart's content. But out-of-the-box colour accuracy isn’t its core strength. Instead, it makes you work a little before it starts impressing you with its talents. BrilliatnColor also affects the tint of skin tones and it looked best at level 1 or 2. Similarly, with Brilliant Contrast, there is immediately more pop and detail in the image but upon closer inspection, you can tell it also blows up the highlights and the sharpening comes off as noise. Best turned off for serious viewing, but can be great for sports and games.

Brightness Mode is a granular control of peak whites or luminance brightness and is a great feature to play around with. The tendency to veer towards a greenish or reddish tinge is omnipresent across various controls and presets so it requires some investment in getting the most out of it, but once you do, this is one helluva picture!

With PureMotion on its mildest setting, the Optoma made Ted Lasso’s rich colours look sublime and the skin tones and textures were captured with all the freshness and richness that Richmond FC exudes. Focus remains ultra-sharp edge-to-edge and the contrast levels are fantastic too, especially for a mid-end laser projector. Switching back and forth between our reference Sony OLED TV and the Optoma, sure, the blacks were shy of absolute levels but they were also not plagued by the excessive brightening of the shadow detail that makes it all appear dark grey instead of black. Killer Soup on Netflix with its colourful tapestry of colours from the tea estates and colonial architecture is reproduced with spellbinding accuracy and naturalness. From the close-up shots of the actors to the aerial shots of the plantations, the Optoma UHZ50+ is a stunner all around.

Ambient light doesn’t take too much away from the vibrancy of the UHZ50+, even on a non-ALR screen, as we experienced it. This says a lot about its 3000 lumens of brightness and HDR performance. Even the HDR Sim mode does a great job of simulating an HDR picture, regardless of the incoming signal. If you’re a gamer, 1080p/240Hz is supported and input lag is curtailed to a low 4ms with the Enhanced Gaming mode.

There are a few misses though. The remote, while backlit and light, doesn’t feel high quality and isn’t designed for making light work of streaming apps if you’re using the onboard Aptoide dongle. The streaming experience itself is rudimentary, with patchy app support and slow loading times. Then there is the built-in speaker which is barely passable for presentations and catching up on news. Even the HDMI ports are limited to 2.0, curbing its full gaming potential.

None of these are deal breakers though. Almost everyone serious about home entertainment has a streaming box attached to their TV anyway. And once the initial set-up is done, you likely won’t need the remote for much besides switching the unit on/off. With its laser light source, you could easily get 30000hrs of life from the UHZ50+ and that’s a lot of hours every day! It could’ve done with more lens shift and better out-of-the-box colour calibration, but put in the time to set it up and you will be rewarded with a picture that ranks at the top of the segment.