Optoma Wave 120SK review

Its standard form factor doesn’t give much away, but the chassis is made from 50% PCR plastic while the packaging is 97% recyclable. In addition, Optoma has paid attention to the overall size of the projector as well, making it a lot more compact than typical lamp-based projectors would be of a similar specification. As a result, they can ship out twice as many Wave 120 units in the same shipping container, reducing the carbon footprint. Of course, the upside to using laser as a light source over a UHP lamp is the increased life span and lower power consumption. 

Basic in its feature set, the top panel of the unit is peppered with tiny control buttons as well as a manual focus ring. The only kind of zoom you get is the digital variety via the set-up menu which ideally should only be used for emergencies, or if you don’t care about picture quality.

Being an IP6X certified design, the optical engine is sealed in an airtight chamber but the fan does whirr up quite a noise if you’re in normal mode. There is an integrated speaker to mask that noise, if you wish to use the Wave 120SK as a stand alone unit. But this isn’t a “smart” projector so it doesn’t get built-in streaming options or an app store. Instead, Optoma serves you a 5V USB port to stick your media sticks into. Think Fire TV.

Connectivity otherwise is basic with twin HDMI 2.0 ports, although one of the ports is eARC compatible without being a 2.1 spec input. A 3.5mm audio out, ethernet and RS232 port complete the back panel. Remote is palsticky but at least it’s backlit. We wouldn’t liked to see buttons differentiated by shape and size along with better button feel, but with projectors, it’s usually a one time set-up process so hopefully you won’t have to feel much of it.

Being a short throw projector, you will have to consider its mounting locations closer to the screen as opposed to the back of the room. We achieved a roughly 100in image from a mere 1.5mts away, leaving s lot of open space in the room to move around. Short throw projectors offer a lot more flexibility in location compared to their ultra short-throw brethren as they can be moved back and forth over a much wider area without having to change the screen.

The Wave 120SK is 4K capable and we hooked it up to our reference Marantz Cinema 40 AVR and Apple TV 4K and started fiddling around with the video output settings. Turns out that it does support 4K HDR content, but only if you manually select 4:2:0 as chroma subsampling. The higher quality 4:2:2 stutters even with our high-speed Profigold 8K HDMI cable. Once the correct frame rate, resolution and HDR were selected, the Wave 120SK churned out an entertaining image with enough brightness and colour accuracy for everyday viewing. Motion processing was handled deftly too with minimal judder during slow pan shots of 24fps material.

Optoma offers limited controls for tweaking the picture, but use the Brilliant Color and Sharpness settings judiciously and you can come very close to the perfectly calibrated look. Skin tones will have to be kept on priority to avoid upsetting the balance and this may make some yellows look less vivid than they should. It’s the delicate balance that you will have to play around to achieve. It does have a tendency to burn out some details during bright outdoor scenes as was seen on Fly Me to the Moon on Apple TV+. Its HDR tone mapping could certainly be improved upon for critical viewers, with more granular controls and a touch more subtlety in implementation.

Good news for gamers comes in the form of a low input lag of 4.2ms as long as you keep the resolution to 1080p/240Hz. Start getting greedy for more pixels and it drops to a still acceptable 17ms at 4K/60Hz. The dedicated gaming mode in the picture settings can be used but bear in mind that it does deactivate any picture geometry you may have engaged in the form of digital zoom or keystone. Placement becomes even more critical if you plan to use this as a gaming projector then, especially since there is no optical lens shift on offer.

Not having support for HDR10+ or optical zoom at this price seems like a miss, but what Optoma have going for the Wave 120SK is high brightness, long life, virtually 24x7 operation in landscape or portrait mode and great colours for the most part. Its contrast levels may not be class leading but on the upside, it is very much possible to enjoy big screen viewing even with some ambient light on in the room. This alone makes it a great value for money compared to a 100in TV and is much more portable to carry around from one home to another or even room to room. But in the world of mid-end projectors, it comes across as a pricey option citing its feature set.