Bigger is better! That has always been the rallying cry for using a projector for gaming instead of a computer monitor or a television. But while that phrase captures the biggest and most important benefit of projectors, it ignores that, for a long while, some attributes considered more important to playability have been lacking. Fortunately, over the past few years projector companies have been putting a bigger focus on gaming and now, more than ever, a projector setup can truly compete with tried-and-true panel displays.

Why Game with a Projector?

As mentioned, the biggest benefit of having a projector as your gaming display—quite literally—is the possible size of the image. The bigger image feels more immersive, something I find especially true with racing games like F1 24 because the car interior size closely matches reality.

Over the past few years, TVs have been getting bigger, though. Where they used to top out at 85 inches (unless you were willing to put down tens of thousands of dollars), now every major manufacturer has a 98-inch or larger model. And most of the models around 100 inches can be found for $6,000—the same as the Samsung The Premiere 9. Sure, you can still drop $20k on a 115-inch model from TCL, and Hisense is planning to release a 116-inch RGB mini-LED TV sometime in 2025, but that brings us to the main drawback of TVs that size.

Big screen TVs are heavy, and can sometimes be upwards of 150 pounds. That can make them a logistical nightmare to hang on your wall without assistance and a mild understanding of building construction. If you instead put one of these on a credenza or TV stand, that surface needs to be wide enough to accommodate the TV feet. Some models use a center pedestal stand, but many have feet that are almost always at or near the edge of a TV and can be 75 inches or more apart. That's a wide credenza.

The size of the TV (and its box) can also make it difficult to carry up stairs, around corners, or in an elevator—for apartment dwellers looking for a large TV image. It's quite a bit easier to carry a ultra-short throw or standard throw projector up four flights of stairs (or even one) than a 100-inch TV.

A big projected image is great for multiplayer games, too, when the screen can sometimes be split up into quadrants. If we consider a 65-inch TV screen (one of the more popular sizes), each player in a four-player game of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe gets a 32-inch diagonal quadrant, while a 120-inch picture from a projector explodes that to 65 inches per player. How's that for getting in the action?

What about computer monitors? Because of the distance we sit from them, they fill a good amount of our view and therefore can be very immersive, and the proliferation of 4K displays in the past couple years—especially 4K OLED displays—means the picture will still look detailed and crisp. These monitors are also made with the gamer in mind and usually include things like very low input lag, high frame rate support, and support for variable refresh rate (which helps to eliminate the possibility of screen tearing).

But I'd argue, as immersive as it can be to game on a 4K OLED computer monitor, it feels more impressive to have a 100-inch (or larger) image projected on a projection screen. Computer gaming also tends to be a more solitary in-person experience. Yes, we all connect via online chat while playing, but there's much less capability for gaming in the same room on the same display (and LAN parties are basically nonexistent nowadays).

Gaming sessions can often be marathon events, increasing our already high average use of devices with screens. One of the dangers of so much screen time is our exposure to blue light, or more specifically high-energy blue light. Studies point to extended direct exposure to high-energy blue light in the range of 380 to 455 nanometers (nm) as being damaging to our retinal health. In the long term, it's attributable to macular degeneration (the macula is the central part of the retina and responsible for focusing our vision).

In the short term we can experience eye strain (I think we've all felt this at some point in our lives). There are monitors that even come with a blue light mode that filters out the more harmful light band, which, expectedly, also adversely affects the visual quality of the picture. But when you're using a projector, there isn't any direct blue light reaching your eyes. It's reflecting off the screen and much of those harmful light rays are being absorbed. That isn't to say using a projector instead of a TV or monitor is 100% safe, but the research suggests it certainly is a safer option for long-term eye health.

The Problems with Projector Gaming

So, a projector gives you bigger screen size for the same or less cost than a TV or monitor. Take my money, right? Well, hang on a sec. It's not all butterflies and rainbows. While projectors' screen size versus cost ratio can be more impressive than TVs, there are still some things that they can't compete with. When compared to new TVs and monitors, projectors don't have the necessary light output to properly display HDR as it was meant to be seen on flat-panel displays. Mini-LED TVs can reach over 4,000 nits of peak brightness, and even OLED and QD-OLED panels—which have historically been hampered by brightness—are now topping 2,000 nits. And with the technology gaining steam over the past few years, there are only going to be more and more games that support HDR and, more importantly, are designed from the ground up to take advantage of it.

One of the main issues with HDR on projectors is that to get enough light output for highlights that pop, the black level becomes elevated and ends up suffering, which hurts contrast. And even then, the brightest brights can't compete with a television, so the overall dynamic range isn't as wide. Tone mapping helps the projector do its best, and there are ways to optimize your projector for HDR, but we're still a while away from projectors that can compete with TVs in this regard. One addition we've seen recently, which is especially good for Xbox gamers, is included support for Dolby Vision.

One thing that's still missing when it comes to projectors is variable refresh rate (VRR). What VRR does is link up the refresh rate of the display with the refresh rate of the signal to eliminate screen tearing—an artifact that makes it look like your screen is in two different sections slightly offset across a horizontal line. It happens mostly during games with fast motion, like FPS or racing games, and I find it to be more apparent when gaming with a computer that has a high-powered graphics card pumping out a constantly fluctuating high frame rate. There are different versions of VRR, the two main ones being FreeSync from AMD and G-Sync from Nvidia. The HDMI 2.1 spec provides for the possibility of supporting HDMI VRR (a feature that also showed up on a handful of HDMI 2.0 TVs). But we're still waiting for VRR to make its way into projectors in any meaningful way.

Features to Look For

Assuming that a big, engaging image from a projector outweighs any of these caveats, what should you look for in your next gaming projector? Here are some key features to keep in mind.

Input Lag. Quite possibly the most important attribute to look for in a gaming projector is low input lag. Input lag measures how long it takes a signal entering the projector's video input to reach the screen. In terms of gaming, this is how long it takes the action of a button press to show up on screen. When you're playing a fighting game like Mortal Kombat that relies on quick reaction for combos, or Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 that requires you to dodge, parry, or jump to avoid attacks, a low input lag could mean a fast death—and loads of frustration. You might be pressing the button at what looks to be the correct time based on the image, but by that point, it's already too late.

Projectors have a well-deserved bad rep for really high input lag. I can't count the number of projectors I've measured with input lag greater than 100 milliseconds (ms). If you're watching movies, who cares, right? But, with a game running at 60fps, that's around a six frame delay, which makes the game unplayable.

Gaming projectors today are designed with low input lag at the top of their priority list. Whereas we used to consider a projector with an input lag of 30 ms really good, we're now regularly seeing projectors that reach into the single digits, such as the Philips GamePix 900, which boasts a 6 ms input lag. That rivals TVs and monitors. At that speed, any delay is negligible, and anyone but the top one percent of competitive gamers won't feel it. (And those folks are competing for their eSports team on a 1080p monitor in an arena, anyway).

High Refresh Rate. When watching movies and TV, we're most concerned with 24 and 60 Hz playback. Watching at a higher refresh rate—120 or 240 Hz—can smooth out motion and cause the movie to look less film-like (whether it looks natural to you and whether you like it is another debate). With games, motion smoothing is less obtrusive and in fact highly desirable since the content is all computer generated and doesn't look inherently unnatural as it does with movies.

The other significant benefit to having a gaming projector with a high refresh rate is tied to the topic mentioned above—input lag. When a projector is able to display at 120 Hz, the input lag is basically halved. So that 1080p projector with 16.8 ms of input lag will have only 8.4 ms of input lag at 120 Hz. Bump that up to 240 Hz, and you're now down to around 4.2 ms of input lag, competing with the ultra-low numbers we see from better gaming monitors.

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To take full advantage of a projector running at a high refresh rate, you will want a game that runs natively at 120 or 240 fps. The new consoles—Xbox Series X/S and PS5—implement high frame rate games in different ways, although they all are limited to 120 fps. To turn on high frame rate with a PS5, you will need to do it within the game's video options menu, and there are currently only a handful of games supported. With both the Xbox Series X and Series S, the list is much larger, thanks in part to the FPS Boost feature that Microsoft added at the beginning of 2021. This feature increases the refresh rate support for some previously released games to either 60 (if the game was at 30 Hz) or 120 Hz. Not every game supported by this feature is available on both the Series X and Series S. High refresh rate console capability is turned on in the TV & Display Options system menu by selecting 120 Hz from the Refresh Rate dropdown. To enable the FPS Boost support, make sure your console is updated to the most recent system firmware, then navigate to the Compatibility Options in the Manage Game & Add-ons menu to flip the switch.

240 Hz refresh rate is only available if you are gaming from a computer with a good enough graphics card. The option needs to be turned on within your video card's display settings once the projector is connected via HDMI.

High refresh rate (both 120 and 240 Hz) is currently limited to 1080p (1920x1080) resolution on most released projectors, but we're starting to see some that support 4K/120Hz, such as the new Sony Bravia projectors, because they now are shipping with the next key feature...

HDMI 2.1. Playing 4K content at 120 Hz requires a significant amount of bandwidth. Bandwidth that is just not possible with the HDMI 2.0 connections still found on most projectors. Projectors that implement HDMI 2.1 are becoming more common, but true 4K/120Hz gaming projectors that combine full bandwidth HDMI 2.1 with low input lag and high refresh rate are a rarity.

But high refresh rate at 4K is only one of the possible benefits of HDMI 2.1. The increased bandwidth also means the possibility of a 10-bit HDR signal with better chroma subsampling (probably one of the most substantial benefits of HDR on a projector). Some HDMI 2.1 features show up on HDMI 2.0 (such as eARC), but we're now seeing these features in greater abundance as 2.1 ports become more common.

Throw Distance. Throw distance, the range of distance from the screen the projector requires to cast a certain size image, is always a concern with projectors. But it is even more so with gaming projectors. I will always advocate to take the time, both with pre-planning your placement and once you have your projector in-hand, to properly set up your projector and avoid any digital zoom or keystone adjustment if at all possible. It can affect projector clarity and diminish light output, but with gaming projectors it can also increase input lag time because you're adding extra processing. In any event, if the projector has a game mode, either as a dedicated picture mode or as a toggle option, this will likely shut off extra processing including any digital image positioning. So it's best to make sure you have a straight-on, square image from the get go.

Right now the main options among gaming projectors are mostly short throw or standard throw models, and many have limited optical zoom capabilities (the preferred type of zoom that won't affect the signal path). Ultra-short throw console projectors available still have input lag that is too high to be considered for serious gaming. As always, you can check the throw distance for any projector in our database with the ProjectorCentral Throw Distance Calculator, and scan for projectors that fit your image size and throw criteria with our Find a Projector database and search engine.

The Future of Projector Gaming

When it comes to 4K/120Hz, input lag, and high refresh rate support, projectors have really come into their own. More and more are shipping with HDMI 2.1, relying on long-lasting laser light engines, and are priced at competitive levels. TVs continue to pull away when it comes to overall brightness, but that's a battle projectors are never going to win. In the coming years, we can expect to see UST projectors with dominant gaming capabilities and a continued increase of 4K/120Hz options. But even with what's ahead in our future, the current state of projector gaming is solid. The technology is only going to get better and more affordable than it already is. The time is right to throw F1 24 up on the screen. Who's got next race?

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