Yaber V10 review: A capable but noisy 1080p projector

Good-quality movie projectors used to start at around £400 to £500, but prices have been plummeting in recent years and more affordable options such as the Yaber V10 are now ten a penny on Amazon. 

It can be tricky to work out what’s good and what isn’t, however. Many listings are stuffed with over-ambitious claims and often specifications that are just plain misleading.

The Yaber V10, however, appears to be one of the good ones. It’s a projector with native 1080p resolution and impressive picture quality, yet its list price is a mere £230. It’s one of the best budget projectors around.

Yaber V10 review: What do you get for the money?

Despite the low price, the Yaber V10 is generously equipped. There’s the projector itself, which is able to project a native 1,920 x 1,080 image and comes with integrated speakers, Wi-Fi streaming, Bluetooth and a decent array of physical ports and sockets.

Yaber claims an impressive 120,000-hour lamp life for the projector’s LED lamp, which is effectively the lifespan of the device. The brightness is rated at “8,500 lumens”, which sounds good, too, but I’d take that with a very large pinch of salt. You’ll need to use the projector in a darkened room with the curtains drawn to enjoy the picture quality.

And there’s a surprisingly generous selection of accessories included in the box. There’s a padded nylon bag to store the projector in when it isn’t in use, an infrared remote control (you’ll need your own AAA batteries), an HDMI cable and a cleaning kit for when dust inevitably gets on the lens and inside the optics.

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Yaber V10 review: What does it do well?

The main priority for any projector is image quality and, in a sufficiently darkened room, the Yaber V10 excels. The manual focus ring and large lens makes it a doddle to set and keep in focus, while colours are vibrant without verging into over-saturation.

Audio from the built-in speaker is pretty good, too. I’d recommend connecting a set of speakers via the 3.5mm output for the best sound quality, but the V10’s audio is far from awful and handy to have if you’re just watching TV.

There’s a healthy selection of physical ports at the rear of the machine, including a pair of HDMI inputs and composite AV, a 3.5mm audio output and a pair of USB sockets so you can display files from external storage. PowerPoint, Word, Excel and PDF files are supported as well as video files, allowing the V10 to double up as a useful business tool.

The Yaber V10 also comes with Wi-Fi connectivity, and this is very easy to set up and use. Just connect the projector to your Wi-Fi network and mirror the screen of your phone or tablet. Both Apple and Miracast screen mirroring are supported, but Netflix, Amazon Prime and a number of other streaming services block this type of streaming so you’ll need to use a streaming stick instead.

There’s even bi-directional Bluetooth for audio connections. This allows the projector to be used as a wireless speaker or to stream audio to external headphones or speakers for enhanced sound quality. Before you get too excited by the latter, be aware that there’s a considerable lag between audio and video. If your source has no way of adjusting lip sync (there are no adjustments on the projector itself), you’ll have to stick with audio from HDMI or the 3.5mm jack; it’s unwatchable otherwise.

Yaber V10 review: What could it do better?

With cheap products such as this there are usually a few gotchas, and the main one with the Yaber V10 is that the fan is loud – much louder than in more expensive projectors. If you’re not going to be sitting right next to it and you have your speakers turned right up this might not bother you, but it’s intrusive during quiet scenes.

The second issue is that you need to position the projector quite a long way from the screen or wall you’re projecting onto. For a 70in image (measured across the diagonal), for example, you need to position the projector 2.5 metres away from the wall. Again, that could be a deal breaker if your room is small, so be aware before you buy and take measurements before you splash out.

My other gripes are fairly small. The remote isn’t backlit, which makes finding the right buttons in the dark tricky, and there’s no lens cap, so you need to make sure nothing rests on the side of the bag that the lens is on when storing it away.

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Yaber V10 review: Should you buy one?

There’s no doubt you can buy a better, quieter projector if you’re willing to spend more money but the Yaber V10 is a great option for anyone seeking a projector for occasional use who can’t afford to splash out £500 or more.

Yes, it’s noisy and the throw is quite long, but with image quality this good and a price this low – at the time of writing, it’s even better value at £187 – it’s a very decent option for anyone looking for big screen thrills on a budget.