The Paris Rhône SP005 ($699.99) is a 4K room-to-room portable projector, and that category is populated primarily by models that cost two or three times as much, or even more. Not surprisingly, the more expensive 4K competitors—including the Hisense C1, our current Editors’ Choice pick—all deliver better image quality, higher brightness, and other benefits. One issue in particular is that the SP005 doesn’t handle 4K HDR discs well. However, it does better with 1080p discs, and it offers good enough onboard audio for most situations, making it a reasonable choice for the price if you stick to 1080p content.Design: 8M Pixels, One LCD, Zero Annoying RainbowsAs with a raft of inexpensive 1080p and still-lower-resolution home entertainment projectors—notably the Vankyo Performance V700W, our current top pick in that group—the SP005 is built around a white LED light source and a single LCD chip. A company spokesperson declined to confirm details of the chip design, beyond saying that the light source is rated at 40,000 hours at full power. However, based on the specs and the technology, the LCD has enough individual cells, presumably, to be able to add a red, green, or blue filter to each cell and wind up with the 8.3 million red/green/blue triads needed for the claimed 4K (3,840-by-2,160 pixel) native resolution. As with projectors that use separate chips for their three primary colors, this approach guarantees that you won’t see any annoying rainbow artifacts.
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(Credit: M. David Stone)
A defining characteristic of room-to-room portables is that they deliver better audio than a typical traditional projector, courtesy of a speaker system that requires extra room in the enclosure. That usually translates to a nearly cubical shape. The SP005 is more of a squashed cube, at 7.1 by 11.4 by 11.2 inches (HWD), but its 11-pound weight is on par for the category.
The initial setup is straightforward. Turn on the projector, and it guides you through a few simple steps, including connecting to the internet and upgrading the firmware if an update is available. A nice touch is support for both Wi-Fi—useful if you plan to move the projector from room to room—and Ethernet, which lets you connect to your network just by plugging in a cable. Smart TV streaming features are built in.Also helping make setup easy is an assortment of increasingly common automated features, including focus and keystone correction. The powered autofocus worked well enough in my tests that there was no need to use the manual control on the remote to improve it. The keystone correction worked well most of the time, and when it didn’t, the manual commands served as a good backup. The SP005 also has automatic object avoidance, meant to adjust the image size to avoid light switches, pictures on the wall, and the like, but I didn’t have a suitable wall for testing it.All the ports are on the back, including the LAN port, two HDMI ports, a USB-C port, and two USB Type-A ports for reading files and potentially supplying power to a third-party streaming dongle. Already-installed streaming apps include Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, and Netflix.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
One potential setup problem is that the lens offset puts the center of the lens at roughly the vertical center of the image, so you’ll generally want to position the projector below your eye line and tilt it up by enough so the bottom of the image is well above the projector. The projector’s front foot doesn’t extend enough to tilt the projector that far, but it’s not hard to find something to slip under the foot.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
Note that because the SP005 uses Android OS for streaming, it’s limited to Android OS apps, which are notorious for their limitations. The Netflix app, for example, requires moving a mouse cursor around the screen using the remote’s left, right, up, and down buttons, which can quickly get tedious. The good news is that the streaming itself worked well in my tests, with no dropped frames or other performance issues.The stereo onboard audio, built around a pair of 12-watt speakers and a 3D soundscape, delivers enough volume to fill a large family room and easily good enough quality so you can do without an external sound system. If you want to use one, however, you can connect it through the 3.5mm stereo-out port, Bluetooth, or the single HDMI port that supports ARC. You can also use the projector as a Bluetooth speaker.Testing the Paris Rhône SP005: Better for 1080p Than for 4KThe SP005 offers four picture mode presets, including a User mode, which is initially the same as the default Standard mode. All four offer settings for brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness. A hue setting shows up, but it’s grayed out in all modes. That leaves no way to adjust hue, but a company representative said it’s working on changing that. For my viewing tests, I chose User mode, tweaked the brightness to improve shadow detail, adjusted contrast to keep highlights from getting blown, and moved the sharpness setting to avoid the oversharpening I saw at the defaults.Image quality for 1080p SDR after my adjustments was solid for casual viewing. I didn’t see any obvious color errors, and the adjusted brightness setting brought out almost all of the shadow detail I know to look for in our test clips without raising the black level by enough to be bothersome.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
The same movies on disc in 4K HDR format didn’t fare as well. Although Paris Rhône says that the projector supports HDR10, HLG HDR, and HDR10+, the company also says that HDR10 support (the version discs use) is limited to “specific circumstances.” The projector offers no confirmation that any HDR support is active with either discs or streaming material.With discs, the disc player reported a 4K HDR connection, but the projector didn’t offer any HDR picture modes or other settings specifically for HDR, staying instead with the same choice of modes and the same settings I used for SDR input. The result was similar to what I expect from a native 1080p projector that accepts 4K HDR but doesn’t handle it well. Image quality was much like viewing through a dark gray filter, with low overall brightness and a severe loss of shadow detail. Worse, I couldn’t find any settings to improve the image.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
For both 1080p SDR and 4K HDR, the actual resolution on the screen—meaning the apparent sharpness and the ability to resolve detail—was closer to what I expect from 1,920 by 1,080 pixels rather than 3,840 by 2,160 pixels. Assuming the LCD is actually 4K, this could be an issue of lens quality, which wouldn’t be surprising at this price. Note also that the projector added a splash of light to the right of the image—presumably from internal reflections in the lens system—that was bright enough to see even under low ambient light levels. Paris Rhône says this is expected behavior for the design. Some people might find it bothersome, while others may consider it a worthwhile trade-off for not seeing rainbow artifacts.The projector’s brightness in our tests was close to what I expect for its 600 ANSI lumen rating. According to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) recommendations, that’s enough to light up a roughly 95-to-130-inch image on a 1.0-gain screen in a dark room. For my tests, the image was appropriately bright for my 90-inch screen both in a dark room and with a low level of ambient light. It was also bright enough to be at least watchable—except for dark scenes being almost totally washed out—using my 80-inch screen on a sunny day in a family room with many windows.
(Credit: M. David Stone)
The input lag, measured with a Bodnar meter, came out to 93 milliseconds (ms) for 1080p/60Hz. That is a little long for casual gaming. For 4K/60Hz input, I measured it at 43ms, which most casual gamers will consider acceptable.Verdict: A 1080p Price Means 1080p QualityThe SP005 is far more suitable for 1080p input than for 4K, but it’s also priced like a 1080p model, so you’re ultimately getting what you pay for. If you want a 4K room-to-room portable that actually takes advantage of 4K, you’ll have to stretch your budget enough to cover the Hisense C1 or other models in its price range. The C1 earned its place as our top pick for a 4K room-to-room portable by delivering the best overall image quality for all versions of HDR we test. However, its direct competitors have their own strengths. The JMGO N1 Ultra offers a gimbal mount that makes it extraordinarily easy to set up. The Xgimi Horizon Ultra supports 3D and has the shortest input lag. And the BenQ GP500 shows the fewest rainbow artifacts.If low cost is your key criterion, you may want to consider the 1080p Vankyo Performance V700W. However, the Paris Rhône SP005’s higher brightness will give you bigger images in any given level of ambient light. And although it doesn’t live up to its promises for 4K image quality, if you think of it strictly as a 1080p projector, it delivers reasonably good brightness and image quality for the price.
The Bottom Line
The Paris Rhône SP005 projector has a notably low price for its rated 4K native resolution, but it doesn’t offer the image quality we expect when displaying 4K HDR content.
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