If it wasn't clear enough from my title... I love this projector. This is not the typical love of someone's first projector either, as this is my 4th or 5th if we count two which I tried but did not like and returned. I've had projectors for the past 8 or so years and plenty of reference to compare this one to.

Here's the thing - projectors are awesome, that's the only way to enjoy a movie, once you see a projector, you'll want one too, everyone does. That said, projectors are not for those, who don't like complicated home theater set ups. They are difficult to install, usually require long cable runs, careful alignment with a screen, regular maintenance, and expensive lamp replacements (typical replacement lamp costs around $300 and lasts about 3000 hours).

The biggest selling point of the LG HS201 takes care of this last problem - the light source of this projector is not a typical lamp, but three LED lights, one for the three primary colors - red, blue, green. The LEDs have a much longer life than the standard bulbs, they are estimated to last 20 000 hours. In practical terms, the LEDs are designed to last the lifetime of the projector without needing to be replaced. The projector doesn't have a lamp hour counter, which is the best feeling for a projector owner.

Lamp longevity aside, the most important issue with any projector is of course the quality of the image. My previous projectors were the first affordable home theater projector - the InFocus X1, followed by the most popular HD projector of a few years ago - the Mitsubishi HC1500. They both produced excellent image quality.

The biggest concern with the LG is its low lumen rating of "only" 200. That compared to 1100 of the X1 and 1500 on the HC1500 sounds like it will be barely visible. In reality, the projector is much brighter than my best expectations. It produces bold, beautiful picture even on the ECO mode, with some ambient light. I would compare its brightness to the X1 after the half point of its lamp life. But here is another quality of the LED light source - LEDs don't lose their brightness over time, unlike the regular projector bulbs, which get dimmer and dimmer.

The LG has three brightness modes - ECO, standard, and presentation, the last one being the brightest. I've been running mine exclusively on ECO mode, which is the dimmest one. The reason is that it is completely silent in that mode, where as noticeably noisy in presentation, and acceptably quiet in standard.

I find, however, that the best contrast and overall picture is achieved in ECO mode. It yields the deepest, darkest blacks I've seen from a projector.

The other big negative of this projector is its native resolution. It is a native SVGA projector, which translates into 800X600 picture frame. This is the same resolution as my first projector the X1. The Mitsubishi was a 720p HD projector and had a clear advantage in terms of resolution, detail, and brightness.

The resolution of the LG is indeed my only complaint. It simply is not enough to take advantage of HD sources. It looks fantastic with DVD though, and even better with HD - just not as sharp or detailed as the HC1500 did.

Sharpness is perhaps the biggest challenge for this projector. I have bumped the sharpness almost to max, which I have never done before. I have also enabled edge enhancement. With those two, the picture becomes quite crisp, but so does the pixel structure. There is no really screen door effect, just visible pixels around the edges of text or other straight lines.

The LED light source solves another problem typical for DLP projectors (which the LG is). The typical DLP projector uses a spinning color wheel to reproduced the red, green, blue colors, which for some people produces an unpleasant effect of seeing "rainbows" during bright scenes.

Since the LG uses three LEDs for each color, there is no need for a color wheel, hence no rainbow effect. I've tried really hard to see it, but it is absolutely not present.

Another advantage of the HS201 is its input variety - it has an HDMI, USB, VGA, coaxial video, and a 3.5mm audio ports. The VGA port doubles as a component input and the needed adapter is included.

The USB accepts flash drives and external mass storage devices. The projector has built in decoders for Divx/Xvid file formats, which can be displayed directly through the USB ports. While it works fairly well, it is not the best option for video playback. I noticed that a lot of the picture controls are not available during USB playback, like ratio control and some picture adjustments.

The HDMI accepts signals all the way to 1080p (60fps). This is a clear advantage over the Samsung 410p, which has similar specifications, but lack and HDMI port and will not accept HD signals through its VGA.

The HDMI port also accepts audio signals. The projector has a built in mono speaker, which works just fine when needed. I have connected my DVD recorder to the HDMI port and this way I can actually watch TV through the projector without using my sound system.

Another feature of the LG 201 which I love and have not had on another projector is the sleep timer. It works just like on a regular TV - programmable from 10 to 380 min on various intervals. With the extra long lamp life of this projector, I actually don't feel bad leaving it on at night and falling asleep allowing the off timer to turn it off later.

One of the biggest challenges I had with the projector was installing it. It was much harder than any previous projector I've had for several reasons: there is no zoom lens, so the only way to align it with the screen is moving it around; there is only one mounting hole on the bottom (for ceiling mounting) which fits into the standard tripod screws but not on regular projector mounts; the throw distance is fairly short - I had to position the projector about a foot forward from where my Mitsubishi used to be; there is no offset - meaning that the bottom (or top if inverter) of the image aligns with the center of the lens.

It took me several hours to fit it properly, and I was almost ready to give up, but in the last moment it occurred to me that I could use a simple speaker mount I bought from Walmart for $10 - this has to be the cheapest projector mount I've seen and it worked great.

Once installed, the projector gives a great flexibility in the picture control. The menu is very nice, easy to use, and has plenty of basic and advanced settings. The specific adjustments will probably vary based on installation, screen, etc, but I would suggest turning off dynamic contrast and color, as they give unnatural look of the picture. The projector has excellent contrast and very saturated colors (I would say as vivid as they are on an LCD TV) without using dynamic contrast and color.

The included remote control is very nice, though small. The buttons are well separated, with various shapes and sizes making it easy to operate by touch in the dark. My only complaint is that there are no buttons for direct input selections, instead the input is chosen by a single input button. The projector sense automatically if a source is activated on the HDMI port and prompts to switch to it, but it does not auto sense any of the other inputs.

This projector is sold under several model numbers depending on the market (I think). The HS201 is the North American version and it has several differences from the HS200 - it has no FM transmitter (although I've seen it advertised as having it at some sites), does not come with a carrying case, and it is white. On the bright side the HS201 costs a bit less than the HS200 without sacrificing performance.

I have certain concerns with the general built quality of the projector - for instance when adjusting the focus ring the lens seems to move up and down inside the case - but so far I have had no problems with the projector (about a month since I bought it). It is also covered by a two year warranty, which is about the standard for projectors, though my Mitsubishi only had a one year warranty and its color wheel started to fail (it became excessively noisy) shortly after it expired.

So would I choose the LG over a true HD projector? If money was not a concern and I could afford $300 for a new bulb at any give moment, no, I wouldn't. My Mitsubishi HC1500 had far superior picture, but also cost double the price and began having problems shortly after its warranty expired.

After that I tried an LCD HD projector (Epson 705HD) which was slightly more expensive than the LG. While it was about 10 times brighter (actually more - 2500 lumens), its picture was 10 times worse.

I think that the LG HS201 is an indication of where the projector market should head to. If they can come up with a 720p projector with about 800 lumens it will be fantastic. Of course that will cut into their revenue from overpriced replacement bulbs, but I am pretty sure we will get there. There is actually currently a 1080p LED projector with 800 lumens brightness - Vivitek H9080FD, but it costs something like $13000.

As a final note - I hope no one gets discouraged of purchasing a projector because of concerns about installation difficulties or bulb costs. I've tried 5 different projectors and managed to make all of the fit my existing space and screen. I've also never had to replace a lamp before I was ready to upgrade to a newer projector, actually never had a lamp burn out. In the mean time I've gone through 3 regular TV sets, which lasted less than any of my projectors.



Recommended: Yes

Purchase Price (if leased, monthly payment): 500.00