To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more

Acer H7531D review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £750
inc VAT

Great connectivity, but picture quality lets the H7531D down

Specifications

1,920×1,080 resolution, 2 ANSI lumens, 95x294x229mm, 3.2kg

http://www.box.co.uk

Acer’s H7531D is a Full HD 1080p home cinema projector firmly aimed at the living room. It’s small enough to sit on a book shelf, so you should have no trouble finding somewhere to put it. Plus, it’ll look great wherever it goes thanks to its attractive white and silver case.

Acer H7531D

A decent array of ports on the back make it fairly simple to connect to your existing setup – two HDMI ports, component, S-Video and VGA outputs should be enough for most equipment. The single 3.5mm audio input isn’t so useful: the feeble 2w speaker isn’t going to challenge a proper hi-fi system. It could at least make itself heard over the cooling fan, which stayed very quiet even after a few hours’ use.

Acer H7531D

There are a few controls on the top of the unit, but you’ll mostly rely on the remote control to tweak picture settings. It’s hardly comprehensive, but there are zoom and aspect ratio controls. Lens adjustments are manual, though, so you can only alter the picture digitally without reaching for the projector itself. Keystone correction is present as expected, but degrades image quality.

Acer H7531D

The on-screen menu system is plain, yet easy to navigate – picture options include brightness, contrast and colour tone, as well as tint, saturation and black levels. If you prefer using presets, there are eight different picture modes – Movie and Sports look the best, creating the most accurate flesh tones and balanced colours. Game and Presentation both pushed the brightness too far, creating a washed-out image.

The 2,000 lumen lamp might suggest the H7531D is bright enough to use with the lights on, but we found that it was easily overwhelmed by ambient light, making darker scenes hard to see. Turning down the lights and closing the curtains made a huge difference, preserving detail in the dimly lit opening scenes of Casino Royale. Unfortunately, this also highlighted the distracting DLP rainbow effect – black and white scenes suffered the most, but it was less pronounced in scenes with bright colours. As is colour wheel spins only three times per frame, you’re more likely to spot the rainbow effect in the H7531D than in other projectors with faster colour wheels. If you’re particularly susceptible to the effect, this alone may be enough to put you off.

Acer H7531D

Looking past this problem, image quality was reasonably good, with fairly accurate colours once we’d spent some time in the settings menus. Static shots looked great, but fast-moving scenes suffered from some noticeable artefacts and weren’t smooth. With no options for motion smoothing or noise reduction, you’re limited to whatever settings your source devices support. For a 1080p projector Blu-ray movies didn’t look quite as sharp as we’d expect.

At £750, the H7531D is fairly inexpensive for a 1080p projector. It lacks some of the more advanced features of the more expensive competition, but has everything you would want for a home cinema. However, you’re better off spending £10 more on the BenQ W1060 which has a much sharper picture and better image quality at default settings.

Details

Price £750
Details www.acer.co.uk
Rating ***

Specifications

Projector technology DLP
Lamp brightness 2 ANSI lumens
Lamp life 2,500
Lamp life in economy mode 4,000
Contrast ratio 50,000:1 dynamic

Picture

Native resolution 1,920×1,080
Max compressed resolution 1,600×1,200
Aspect ratio 16:9
Other aspect ratios 4:3
Max diagonal at 7ft 59in
Throw ratio 1.51:1 to 1.83:1
Optical zoom 1.2x
Projection distance 1.5m to 10m
Mirror image yes
Invert image yes
Lens shift horizontal 0%
Lens shift vertical 15%
HD Ready yes
Special view modes Movie, Dark Cinema, Game, Sports, User, Bright, Standard, Presentation

Inputs/Outputs

VGA input yes
DVI input No
Sound inputs 3.5mm
Composite input yes
S-video input yes
HDMI input yes
PAL support yes
SECAM support yes
NTSC support yes
Audio output none
Video output none
Others inputs/outputs RS232

Other

Noise (in normal use) 30dB(A)
Size 95x294x229mm
Weight 3.2kg
Internal speakers yes (2W mono)
Extras remote, carry case, cables (VGA, component video)
Remote special features aspect ratio, zoom, freeze
Power consumption standby 1W
Power consumption on 285W

Lamp

Lamp cost (inc VAT) £130
Lamp supplier www.projectorshop24.co.uk
Lamp cost per hour of use £0.05
Lamp cost per hour of use (economy) £0.03

Buying Information

Price £750
Supplier http://www.box.co.uk
Details www.acer.co.uk