Optoma HD33 review

Optoma’s HD33 3D home cinema projector is smoothly sculpted in white plastic, which will look great no matter where it’s placed. As one of the more expensive DLP projectors we’ve seen recently, we were interested to see what it has to offer over similarly priced LCD models.

Both new or current projector users shouldn’t struggle to find a place for the reasonably sized unit. Side-facing exhaust vents are less than ideal for placing the HD33 on a bookshelf, but the fan should stay quiet when given enough breathing room – we could barely hear it over the ambient noise of our test room.

The HD33 takes a minimalist approach. It doesn’t have an internal speaker, so to get audio, you’ll need to use a set of dedicated speakers. There no buttons on the main unit, aside from the single power button at the rear next to the video inputs. Two HDMI ports, composite and VGA connections should be enough for most setups, although there are a few missing ports that we would expect to see on a projector in this price range. However, a 12v trigger, USB service port and RS232 port could be useful.

Without any buttons, you’ll be relying on the remote control to change image settings – the bright blue backlight makes it easy to use in a dark room, and all the functions you would expect are present. Aspect ratio, picture, colour and 3D modes, input selection and brightness settings are all assigned to individual buttons, but you can also dive into the menu system for more in-depth tweaking.

The four preset picture modes are good starting points, but none of them made our test footage look its best. Thankfully, we could adjust the brightness, contrast, colour and sharpness, as well as Optoma’s Pure Engine, for noise reduction and motion smoothing.

2D footage looked slightly washed out at the default settings, but this was easily fixed with a few tweaks to the colours. Contrast wasn’t as good as we’d expected, particularly in darker scenes, and there was an unmistakable rainbow effect in places. It took some fighting with the manual lens to get images looking sharp: it moves slightly after you let go.

The HD33 doesn’t have an integrated receiver for its active shutter glasses; you have to connect the bundled external wireless emitter to the projector. It’s omnidirectional, unlike other projectors we’ve seen, so the supplied glasses had no trouble picking up a signal. 3D footage jumped off the screen in a way other projectors fail to match and, despite the 1,800-lumen lamp, the image remained bright and there was very little flicker from the lights in our test room.

Optoma’s high-end projectors carry serious gravitas, but the HD33 feels a little too stripped back to reach such a low price. The manual lens adjustment is less precise than we would like and 2D picture quality is nothing special. It’s a fine choice if 3D is your main priority but a better option is Epson’s cheaper EH-TW5900, which has equally immersive 3D but much better 2D image quality.