Samsung has announced the launch of its Premiere range of home cinema projectors, featuring two projector models that are coming this year – including a triple-laser 4K projector that brings HDR10+ to home projection for the first time.
With a global launch expected in September or October, the high-end Premiere projector range boasts a number of premium features, notably including support for the HDR10+ dynamic HDR format – making this the first projector range to do so. You can expect it to land in South Korea and the US first, followed by the UK and most of Europe (Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Nordics).
Head of Visual Display at Samsung Europe, Nathan Sheffield also told TechRadar that the flagship Samsung Premiere projector will boast 2,800 lumens brightness – beating the 2,500 lumens of the LG Cinebeam HU80KSW and Vava 4K laser projector, though not quite as high as the BenQ TK850’s 3,000 lumens.
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That’s not all, though. The projectors will be portable – portable enough to “move room to room”, at least – with dimensions of just 550 x 367 x 128mm. They’ll be short-throw, too, meaning you’ll be able to get a 100-inch projection from just 10cm away, or a max 120-130 inch projection from a slightly further distance. Sheffield tells us that the projectors' casing will be “wrapped in a premium fabric”, and offers a "radical design" unlike what we've seen before.
Viewers will also be getting the “full suite” of Tizen OS applications, meaning the same app support and slick interface as the best Samsung TVs – something you barely see these days, even on flagship projectors.
It's a bold arrival by Samsung in the high-end projector market, given it doesn't currently have much of a presence in AV outside of TVs. You do see the occasional portable projector from Samsung, as with the recent SP-P400B, but nothing with quite this level of ambition.
Sound and vision
The flagship LSP9 projector – compared to the cheaper LSP7 model – will also feature a 4.2 channel speaker system (“two woofers, two tweeters”) with a 40W output, as well as the Acoustic Beam technology Samsung uses in its best soundbars for surround sound directed around the room. The LSP9 will also have a slightly larger 130-inch projection, with the LSP7 maxing out at 120 inches.
We’re told the LSP7 will feature a more conventional single-laser projection system, though with an expanded color gamut to incorporate yellow into its RGB color model for richer and more accurate color recreation: “In addition to the conventional colour wheel we've also added yellow. So that will now give you a full spectrum of colours, as opposed to generally what you'll see with a conventional projector of that class, which is a blue laser with just RGB [red, green, blue].”
“This is a new category for us,” Sheffield says. “It’s a new area of innovation, and demonstrates how we at Samsung continue to try and push those boundaries of technology into areas that have never really before been possible.”
There’s no price tag for the Premiere range yet, but we were told by Sheffield that both models would be comparable with Samsung’s 4K and 8K TV ranges. Given the specs involved, too, there’s no way you’d be paying less than $2,000 / £2,000 / AU$3,000, and it’s more likely you’re paying above $3,000 / £3,000 / AU$4,500.
HDR outlier
HDR (high dynamic range) has been a late addition to projectors, compared to its presence on the majority of mid-range 4K TVs these days. Dynamic HDR formats like Dolby Vision and HDR10+, which add additional scene-by-scene metadata to further calibrate your picture, are especially more common on TVs than projectors, and the inclusion of HDR10+ here is definitely exciting. (You’re not getting Dolby Vision, though, as is the case on all new Samsung TVs).
The Premiere definitely has an advantage over the competition, then – especially when you throw in the premium audio support (4.2 channel speakers) and up-to-date smart platform. Projectors often carry outdated smart TV software, making coupling one with a streaming stick usually the best outcome – so the introduction of Tizen here could be a real game-changer.
That said, a $30/£30/AU$45 streaming stick isn’t overly expensive compared to a premium projector, so we’ll need to see what the pricing ends up being before recommending the Premiere outright. But on specs alone, the Premiere projector range is looking like nothing else on the market.
The Premiere projectors will also feature Tap View at launch, with multi-view functionality coming in the following months.
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