With the World Cup in prospect you want to prepare something special. An extra large screen for example where you can watch the matches with all friends. This Acer H6517ABD Full HD projector offers Full HD projection at an absolute bottom price.
Acer H6517ABD – specifications
- What: Full HD DLP Projector
- Setup: 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, light output 3,400 ANSI lumen, dynamic contrast 20,000:
- 1 , projection ratio 1.48 – 1.62 (100 inch diagonal between 3.3 and 3.6 m), 1.1x zoom lens, noise level 31/28 dB (standard, ecomode)
- Connections: 1x hdmi, 1x vga, 1x usb (firmware only), 1x stereo minijack in
- Lamp life: 5,000 / 6,000 / 10,000 hours
- Extras: 3D, 1x 3W speaker
- Dimensions: 314 x 223 x 93 mm
- Weight: 2 , 5 kg
- Consumption: 235/195 / 0.5 watt
- MSRP: 549 euro
Acer H6517ABD – design
This Acer is a textbook example of how compact DLP projectors can be. No wonder he is delivered with a bag, which will undoubtedly come in handy. Because this compact, lightweight projector can easily be taken to friends or family.
You can not expect design delights for this price. The Acer has a glossy white body, decorated with horizontal ribs. The air exhaust of the cooling is at the front left, it is leaking a lot of light, but that does not disturb the image.
Connections
The first compromise you make at the connections. They are all on the side. Well, all … There is once hdmi and once vga present. In addition, there is only a stereo minijack input available. The USB connection is only for firmware upgrades.
We certainly do not exaggerate when we say that this Acer only offers the essential connections.
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Acer H6517ABD – Placement and ease of use
You also deliver a lot on placement in. The projection ratio of the lens is quite typical, and delivers a 100 inch image from 3.6 meters. The zoom lens is very limited with a factor of 1.1 you can only shorten the distance for that 100 inch image to 3.3 meters. That is rather a symbolic shortening. There is a digital zoom (factor of 1.2 to 2.0), but with that you obviously cut away on all sides of the image. Possible to consider in some exceptional cases, but probably of limited usefulness.
The lens has an offset of 116%, the image thus appears 16% of the image height above the lens. Lensshift is missing, but there is (automatic) vertical keystone correction. So if you have to tilt the projector up or down, it will eliminate the trapezoidal distortion itself. If desired, you can disable the automatic correction and manually intervene.
With the lamp in standard mode this Acer is not really quiet, but again given the price tag we find the result still very acceptable. A soft buzz in the background should therefore be included. If you activate the eco mode, the sound will drop to a level that will disappear to the background with most movie soundtracks.
Menus
You may not expect too many configuration options for this price. That is not too bad. If you want to dive into the settings to adjust things, you can. The Acer offers all the usual settings, in that area you do not deliver at all.
There are eight gamma curves available, although these are unfortunately not documented. Curves with BE stand for Black Enhanced (more black detail), and WE stands for White Enhanced (more white detail), S curve emphasizes the contrast. There is even a complete color management system, and the ability to adjust the gray scale.
Remote control
The remote of this projector is a small, unlit zapper that clearly stands out multiple devices are in service. A lot of tests do not work on this model. The D-pad is quite handy, but otherwise this remote provides little added value for ease of use. The only advantage is that you can adjust the image mode and aspect ratio with a key.
Acer H6517ABD – features
This is a DLP projector with Full HD resolution. Given the price you can not expect many extra features. The projector supports 3D if you buy the optional glasses. The built-in speaker is useful when you use the projector on the move, but even then it is more a temporary solution. Absolutely no bass, and rather stark sound make him very limited. Acer should have provided a stereo minijack outlet instead of an input. With a simple portable speaker you would be able to provide a substantial audio upgrade.
If you do not use a projection screen but project it onto a wall, you can indicate the color of the wall in the menu so that the projector can correct it. That is always a sub-optimal solution, but again a useful feature when you watch a movie or football match on the move.
Acer H6517ABD – Image quality
In a budget projector like this you will find no high-tech image processing. The projector still has reasonably good deinterlacing performance, but with somewhat unusual movie or video frame rates you can easily see moiré effects. Connect the projector to a player that outputs 720p or 1080p as the output resolution, avoid 1080i wherever possible. In the menus we find noise reduction, but that was never set (grayed out). Motion interpolation is also lacking. Somewhat unexpectedly, he does have dynamic contrast (Dynamic black in the menu). The impact is relatively small, but we also found no negative impact, so you can activate it with peace of mind. What you do get is a perfect Full HD view. The image is sharp and shows neatly all the detail.
The projector supplies 3,400 lumens on paper, but even in the Bright mode we get a maximum of 2,500 lumens. That is still impressive, but still well under the specification. That image mode also delivers very poor color performance. If you work with a lot of ambient light, he can be considered. You get the best results from all presets with the Standard Picture Mode. It still gets 1,840 lumens, and combines that with a contrast of 2,100: 1. That is an excellent performance without exaggeration. It allows you to use a 130 inch screen even with a little light, and you can go even bigger with darkening. If you find it a bit too bright (or work on a 90-inch screen or smaller), use the eco-mode lamp to cut around 20% of the light output. The two film modes reach about 1,300 lumens at a contrast of 1,500: 1.
The Standard Picture Mode gets a mixed result when we look at the color measurements. The projector has a good contrast, and fine gamma curve (a bit too dark though), but scores poorly on two levels. He hides slightly white detail as well as black detail. That’s no problem if you look at ambient light, but the projector is good enough for a real film session, and in that case you want more black detail. His second weakness is color rendering. To begin with, the Acer struggles with a somewhat too small color palette.
In addition, like many cheaper DLP projectors, it boosts its white by using Brilliant Color. Colors therefore look a little too dark. You can of course turn off Brilliant Color, but the Acer also allows you to do that in steps by setting Witpiek lower. You then exchange some brightness for slightly better colors. Despite these limitations, the images are still pretty handsome. Only some skin colors tend to be too much red, but all other deviations are reasonably balanced. The end result may still be seen.
If you want the best settings for a film session, choose the Default preset, set Brightness to 50, Contrast to 46-48, color temperature to CT2, select gamma 2.2 and activate Dynamic black. With those settings you will gain a lot of black and white detail. Leave them under the user preset, and switch to Standard if you look at more light.
Gaming
The Acer H6517ABD has a lag of 33 ms. We also dare to recommend the projector for gaming.
Review equipment
For the lag measurement we use a Leo Bodnar Display-lagmeter. For all other measurements we rely on a Spectracal C6 colorimeter, Xrite i1 Pro spectrophotometer, an AVFoundry HDMI Pattern Generator an HDFury Integral for HDR patterns and the Spectracal Calman for Business Software
Acer H6517ABD – Conclusion
It is undeniable that this projector is stripped of all possible fringes. But is that a big problem? Ok, you have to fix it with one hdmi and one vga connection, and there is hardly any flexibility in installing. But on the other hand, you will get a decent Full HD projector for a bottom price. One with excellent light output and good contrast.
So he can serve for film (in the dark) and for sporting events (where you let in the light) and for gaming. Of course you can not expect top color performance for that price, but the images still have a balanced color palette, so even that does not spoil the fun. If we only look at the performance and equipment, we would tend to a six, but taking the price into account, we would take that score with conviction to eight.
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