ViewSonic Pro7827HD projector review

ViewSonic Pro7827HD

£649

8.6

Build quality

8.5/10

Design

8.5/10

Picture quality

8.5/10

Ease of use

9.0/10

Value

8.5/10

Pros

Compact
Decent built-in speaker
Good picture
Range of inputs
Lens flexibility

Cons

PortAll dongle another £70

Get the Pro7827HD for £600 now

ViewSonic has added some new members to its LightStream family and I have had the ViewSonic Pro7827HD for a week to see how it performs.

The LightStream entertainment projectors promise to give you incredible colour accuracy as well as stunning image quality.

Having previously loaned a ViewSonic projector I can already vouch for their rather unexpectedly good audio quality.

What I was really interested in seeing is how the image quality and colour saturation has improved with the new tech.

Let’s get to it shall we?

ViewSonic Pro7827HD design

The ViewSonic Pro7827HD that I have been loaned is finished in a very nice and stealthy black brushed finish which, although won’t be that masked against a white ceiling, does make it less conspicuous when the lights are off.

The Pro7827HD does share some design points with the PJD7830HDL in so far as you can tell that they’re from the same company – and that is certainly no bad thing.

The projector measures 316 mm(W) x 228 mm(D) x 103.7 mm(H) and weighs just 2.6Kg

Around the back you will find one standard HDMI and two HDMI/MHL inputs, composite, component, audio, micro USB, RS232 and RJ45 connectors.

All of this is tidied away by a neat cable management hood which simply clicks and then screws on.

On top of the Pro7827HD are the power and stand-by buttons as well as source, colour mode and menu selectors. Needless to say, these can also be accessed by the bundled remote control.

There are also a dials for the vertical lens shift (handy for short throw projecting), zoom and focus.

ViewSonic Pro7827HD performance

Plugging in my Amazon Fire Stick directly in to the Pro7827HD’s HDMI port gave me instant access to a range of films. I think that, if I ever came to own a projector, the Fire Stick and possible Chromecast would get plenty of use.

The Pro7827HD is the first in the LightStream line to feature an RGBRGB 6-segment colour wheel. This is powered by ViewSonic’s SuperColour technology which kicks out Rec.709 cinematic colours within the sRGB colour space.

What that all means, as far as I could see, is that the special coating used to filter segmental spectrums of RGB actually intensifies the Red, Blue, and Green colours. The end result is increased visual performance. This was more noticeable on playing Blu-rays through the projector via my Oppo disc spinner.

The 1080p Full HD picture on the Pro7827HD seemed to have better hue and colour saturation than my previous test device from ViewSonic. I would say that the colour gradients are definitely better handled by this new projector.

The 2,200 lumens brightness mated with 22,000:1 contrast ratio really pushes out a clear and sharp picture, even when the light in the room is far from optimal – my living room drapes are nowhere near blackout quality.

It was good to hear that ViewSonic have continued to install a decent speaker set-up in their home cinema projectors and the Pro7827HD’s 10w unit is also packing the company’s SonicExpert sound enhancement tech.

Naturally, if you were looking for a full home cinema experience then I would advise adding external speakers but, for quickly watching a film within 5 minutes of unpacking the Pro7827HD, the internal sound slinger did really well.