Stand in front of the biggest TV you can buy and you’re looking at 77 inches of picture, which feels enormous in the shop, but will stop feeling that way about a month after you’ve got it up on your wall. The Valerion VisionMaster Max throws a 120-inch image onto that same wall from about twelve feet back. That’s roughly two and a half times the picture you’re looking at now.
Same couch, but all of a sudden you can see the whole field.
And 120 isn’t the ceiling either. Valerion’s projectors start at 40 inches and can crank all the way up to 300, so the only thing stopping you is your wall and how far back you can sit.
You Don’t Have to Black Out the Room
Projectors picked up a reputation for needing a cave, and that’s a good decade out of date now. This one pushes 3,500 ISO lumens out of a triple RGB laser. When Engadget tested it they left the blinds open for sports and TV, and standard mode handled it fine.
Google TV is already inside, so your apps and AirPlay and Chromecast are just there, with no extra box cluttering up the shelf. It lines itself up when you turn it on, and if the only spot you can mount it is a bit off to one side, you’ve got 105% of lens shift either way to nudge the picture back where it belongs.
Colors Your TV Physically Can’t Do
Valerion put a laser into their projectors that do 110% of Rec.2020. That’s the widest color spec in consumer video, so it means something when Projector Reviews points out that most high-end TVs can’t even manage 80% of it. Their own measurements on this came back at 132% of DCI-P3 in HDR.
In plain terms, turf stays green under the floodlights instead of going yellow on you, and a jersey keeps its color when the camera swings into the shadows. Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are both in there too, so a broadcast turns up looking how the people who graded it wanted it to look.
This Is Where the Money Went
The hardest thing for any projector to get right are black levels, and it’s where Valerion spent the budget. They call the whole system NoirScene: a six-level motorized iris, their Enhanced Black Level processing, and a shield inside the case that soaks up stray light before it washes your picture out. Valerion rates it at 5,000:1 native contrast, where most projectors land nearer 1,000:1.
That buys you a night game that looks like a night game instead of grey soup. Engadget ran the iris on medium and never caught the picture pumping brighter and darker as the shots changed, which is exactly the thing that makes a cheap projector look cheap the second a broadcast cuts from a floodlit field to a dark crowd.
They’re still tinkering with it, too. An update in August handed every current model a middle Enhanced Black Level setting, so instead of picking between two extremes you can sit it in the middle and forget about it.
So, Max or Pro 2?
The Max is $3,499 (down 13% from the usual $3,999) and the Pro 2 is $2,299 (down 23% from the usual $2,999), so the real question is what that extra thousand buys you. It gets you a brighter laser at 3,500 ISO lumens against 3,000, the motorized iris, and the lens shift the Pro 2 doesn’t have at all.
Go with the Pro 2 if your room gets properly dark and you can mount the thing straight on with the screen, because that’s really all it asks of you. If you don’t have a ceiling mount, AWOL offers a bundle for $2,199 that includes a ceiling mount and a 4-pack of DLP Link 3D glasses. You can also grab a bundle that has an outdoor screen if you’d rather set up your Pro 2 outside.
Go with the Max if you’re fighting daylight, or the only place it fits is off to one side, or you just want the black levels that earned it an Editor’s Choice from Projector Reviews, who figured it gets you about 80% of high-end performance for 40% of what high-end costs. If you plan on using your projector outdoors, now would be the best time to spring for the Valerion Max bundle that includes an outdoor screen and stand, $3,399 (down 36% from the usual $5,297). Like the Pro 2, there’s also a bundle that comes with DLP Link 3D glasses if you don’t need an outdoor screen.
Either way, these live on a ceiling mount or a shelf behind you, not tucked under the screen. And put some money aside for speakers, since the built-in ones are the weakest part of the whole package by a mile.
Put one up before the season ends, and that 77-inch you’ve got will start looking like it’s just a monitor.
