Customer Reviews

LG HS201 Slim LED Front Projector

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

As a retired professor volunteering in a senior citizen's program, I must tote what I need to teach cultural history. That includes equipment to show films and images and to play reasonable quality recorded music, as well as to lecture. The LG HS201 is ideal for my purposes. With 200 lumens it is the first LED projector that I have seen that is sufficiently bright and that has a usable built-in stereo sound system, although I do augment its meager 2 watts with external speakers. The USB port facilitates set-up and frees me from a tangle of cables, as I can easily put a couple of slightly compressed movies, an hour of MP3 classical music, and nearly 100 JPEG images onto an 8GB flash drive. The fan noise is barely audible--an estimated 29 DB--and at under 2 lbs. the projector is truly portable.

Most of its purported shortcomings are no more than compromises necessary to bring a lamp-free projector to market at a $500 price. For that figure, one should not expect a zoom lens, a tilt adjustment, or anything like a theater sound system. Incidentally, only the HS 200G and HS201G, neither of which is currently marketed in the USA, offer a standard carrying bag, and just the HS200 series, also not yet sold here, includes an FM audio transmitter. However, there is one LG HS201 defect that can and should be remedied at the earliest opportunity. The owner's manual is written in the unidiomatic English of a non-native speaker, and some of the manual's technical writing defies comprehension. A newly edited version would be helpful.

If you are interested in buying the LG HS201, I would suggest four accessories at first: (a) a USB flash drive of 8 or 16GB; (b) a lightweight tripod, rated at over 6 lbs; (c) a pair of small speakers; and (d) a carrying bag. With these, you should be good to go!

So LED projectors are much easier to maintain than normal projectors. Not having to be careful about letting the lamp cool is great. But LED's are dim. Nothing on the order of Pico Projectors, but right on the edge of affecting the projector's usefulness. This is the first LED Projector I have owned and I can say that the colored LED's as the light source provides a really rich, vivid color to the image. As compared to a bright white light shown through a filter wheel on a traditional DLP projector, the LED's in the Phlatlight Chipset make the most out of the limited amount of light they produce by providing better than neccessary color depth that makes the image seem brighter than it probably is. And among all LED Projectors this LG model is currently the brightest. Although there is a limit to how brightly lit a room can be, while still leaving an enjoyable image from the LG HS201, daytime viewability is very adequate with this projector. Each generation of products based on these Phlatlight chipsets is better than the last. Whereas the Dell and Acer palmtop LED projectors from two years ago may have been too dim to accept, this model finally makes the grade and needs make no excuses for what it is. It is cool, quiet, light-weight, rugged and it provides a relatively bright and highly saturated image in a room with some lighting. However, as the room lights are dimmed the image does of course become more enjoyable.
Benq's GP1 is a great machine with color corrections built in (for projecting on a colored wall) as well as key stone adjustments and is a great effort. However, the BenQ is built around a 100 lumen Phatlight LED chipset where as this LG uses a 200 Lumen Phatlight LED chipset. That makes all the difference. Also, LG should get some credit for responding to the complaints that were made about all of the different manufacturers last-generation LED Projectors. Most notably the touch controls used by Samsung, BenQ, and previously LG are now replaced by regular backlit buttons which provide a normal tactile feedback while navigating the menus. Also, there is relatively no lag in navigating the menus. Those two things led to nightmarish controls on many last generation Samsung and Benq projectors. Here all works as it should. Secondly, LG utilizes a small, light weight AC Adapter on the HS201 instead of the giant monster power bricks from the previous models that almost weighed more than the projectors that they powered.
I can not say too many times that this model is what every LED projector should haver been all along. Aside from the slight rainbow tinge when you glance across the screen (which some people never even notice) this projector is as good as an LED DLP unit can be, until Luminus starts building affordable chipsets of at least double this lumen output. The fact that this is a third generation product shows in how well baked the whole experience is. At $500 these projectors are worth at least the asking price.

This is my 5th projector. I am a long time user that has had various projectors since 1995. My last couple of projectors were both Epson and because I like a bright picture I would run Presentation mode towards the end of the bulb life and the bulbs would wear out in about 2000 hours.

After reading reviews all over the Internet about the LG LED projector I took a chance on it knowing the resolution would not be as high as my previous projectors. I had a budget this time of $900 and after looking at how much bulb replacement is every year and a half I decided to try it. If the LED projector was not good enough I would use it for HDTV viewing only and for DVD movies I would install another projector next to it just for movies.

Out of the box I was blown away by how bright and rich the colors are on this LED projector. 200 Lumens can be watched during the day in a windowed room as long as blinds are used. Where the projector really shines is at night where you get the kind of colors you are use to seeing on a plasma. LED is definitely the future. The color adjustment will take you a good day to figure out how to adjust. I was using some presets from AVForum users but it really comes down to tweaking it for a nice mixture of both TV and DVD.

The throw on this projector is great, I actually moved it forward a foot from my old ceiling mount location and the picture is larger on the screen then it was with my last Epson projector. I am running a screen that is 156" Diagonal so if I was willing to have a smaller screen size this projector would probably be bright enough for watching tv during the day in a windowed room.

My favorite part of this projector is the color, LED life on the bulb of 30,000 hours plus, and the very large picture. It is much better than I was expecting and I am not purchasing another projector unless it is a LED with the improvements listed below.

Improvements needed:

720P would make a big difference.
Screen door effect can be seen on white and within text on anything over an 80" screen.
Brightness, perfect at night but would like to see it be a little bit brighter for viewing during the day.

Length:: 4:40 Mins

Most buyers of this product want hassle free projection: Big bright screen, long
lasting, and reasonably priced. This is exactly what this bite sized LED projector delivers.

The Good:
-Only 200 ANSI Lumens, but because of the wide color depth, images do indeed look very bright even in daylight.
-It has 4 preset color profiles to choose from, and 2 "expert" programmable modes.
-HDMI, Audio, Analog, VGA, and USB port(for USB Key with media).
-Short throw gave me a 115" screen from 13 feet.
-Power brick is sized about the same as a laptop's.
-800x600 Native resolution.
-Ability to use as ceiling mount, front or rear projection.
-Great minimal design with back-lit keys easy to navigate.
-Never worry about the bulb running out, this unit will pay for itself.

The Bad:
-Blacks look a bit washed out, but fixable by fine tuning the settings.
-Screen door effect very visible watching movies with sharp lines, such as kid's animated movies and during computing. (starts appearing at large screen sizes) Mitigation by "de-sharpening" did little and was too out of focus in the end. Less noticeable with other movies.
-No zoom. As with many LED projectors, this one lacks zoom. Not a big issue, since unit is small and has a short throw.
-Remote hard to see in dark conditions, and uses abnormal battery (flat round cell)

Neutral:
Has no FM audio built in like the advertising says otherwise, wasn't expecting it anyway. I didn't test the USB slot yet, but I don't believe this projector was made solely for this purpose and should not suffer because of it. Overall, I am very satisfied, and dwarfs the other LED projectors when it comes to usability and brightness. This is a solid buy.

The Essential Review!

WOW All I can say is I'm very impressed! I have been looking at getting an $850 -$1000 Dollar 720p projector for a year now. Then I saw this thing, looked at the reviews and decided to take a chance(Here is everything I wish was in the reviews I read). I was very happy with my purchase and with the 30,000 hour life span I can enjoy this thing ALL the time and not have to worry about burning up bulbs. That alone makes it worth while. I love playing games and watching movies so this makes everything BIGGER!

I was amazed at the difference between LCD/DLP and LED. With standard bulbs, your shooting white light through a LCD or a color wheel. With LED's you have RED,GREEN and BLUE LEDs making RED, GREEN and Blue light. The color is much richer and more brilliant. The 200 ANSI Lumen rating can be almost completely ignored. With LEDs and bulbs your NOT comparing apples to apples, I can have 2 60 watt CFL bulbs in the back of the room on and still play games on the projector with no problems. The only real issue is the 800 X 600 resolution. The projector up-scales nicely to 1024/768 and other resolutions with NO problems. The controls are all that I expected and more and are easy to use.

If your balking about the resolution being too low, or the brightness. Just open up your wallet and dump about $1200 - $3000 into a HD DLP projector. And if you enjoy DVDs, video/PC games, youTube, and taking a giant screen over to your friends house for games or the Superbowl party this is the projector for you.

I'm going to break down the projector into all the uses you could use it for:

PC Games: The bright color looks great on modern games and plays well with older ones too. I played one of the hardest games to display well, Counter Strike. Absolutely NO MOTION BLUR when spinning around 180 degrees. I did have issues with dark shadows and HDR lighting. However after tweaking the projector and the games video settings I was able to play it in my living room on a huge 92" screen. I found that each game needed to be tweaked a little however it was no problem for this projector. Most of my games will display at 800X600 and if they didn't 1024 X 768 looked fine. A very nice monitor replacement.

Video Games: (Wii, Gamecube, XBOX, PS2, Dreamcast, N64, SEGA Genesis) Standard resolution video games played great on this projector, as I said before the LED light, brilliant color and No motion blur made for a great gaming experience. In Mario Kart 4 player everyone gets there own 46 inch screen. I just cant describe how awesome that is. Also I was able to see beyond the edges of the screen you would normally see on a tube TV.

Movies: Ahh the LED projector really shines here. As with the Video Game everything looks great. And with the resolution 800X600 blue rays also take advantage of the higher resolution. Everything looks very nice. Note that if your using the HDMI port for sound you can output via the headphone jack to an analog aux in.

Computer: Connecting this to your PC for games is great but watching some youTube/Hulu with friends is great too. Visualizing WinAmp with MilkDrop looked Impressive. Everything looks nice at 800/600 and most all web sites display properly. Text is clearly visible at native res. It also helps to use the MS clear type text tool, as on any LCD monitor.

Portability: Its small, smaller than the pictures look. It would be great at presentations and trade shows. If your mounting it, It uses a camera mount, single screw. I got the ceiling mount on Amazon, it worked great. (I mounted that on a small piece of wood on my ceiling) Taking it down to go to a friends house takes a few seconds. (I will be taking this to my next LAN party INSTEAD of a monitor)

Slide show: I have tried out the picture slide show, It was about what I expected. I think that almost everyone will attach this to a computer for viewing movies and pictures so this is a extra feature.

Conclusion: Wow! You read this far! Its great order it!

I'm going to watch my projector.

Just a quick review after first impressions with the projector having tested it for about 8 hours with various inputs and using it in the field in a fairly tough lighting conditions.

I got it and set it up in my office on the wall in about 10 minutes, tried it with multiple sources and was amazed. I had enough time to watch a full Blu RAY through the HDMI input and it was incredible. Showed a 16:9 ratio and colors were amazing. And the amount of fine tuning you could was beyond what I expected. Tried the VGA input from computer and was very very pleased. The built in speakers were as good as one could expect for something so small, but most would want an additional audio connection to really match the visuals.

Incredibly quiet and no heat, plus it weighs very very little and I was able to mount on a tripod which was great for flexibility. I then used it for a wedding to project in a room to show a video that was prepared ahead of time played off my laptop... Again due to its small size and versatility I was able to set up a a small tripod, drape a black cloth around the whole thing and hide the laptop under that. Even in a room with huge sun lights (it was in a room that had an indoor pool and had 6, 20 foot windows in the ceiling) and with the early evening light coming into the room it still looked great.

Next test will be "movie night" outdoors on a screen at my friend's farm, so we will see how that looks.

So having never purchased one before and having not used one for a couple of years, I was amazed by this and very pleased with the purchase.

For those curious I am video producer, everything from some events to corporate training and sales video and all the way to documentary film editing and color correction, so just as a frame of reference for me to say it looked good, I wouldnt say it unless I meant it because I have to have a critical eye about this stuff all the time.

Hope it helps

I had an old 1000-lumen Acer projector at home with a bulb that gave up again, so I took a chance on this new projector. What a great gamble.

This thing is brighter than the 200 lumens would make it sound at first. Now I wouldn't go taking this to Miami Beach and try to to Powerpoint out by the ocean, but even in a modestly-lit room, and especially a dimly-lit room, this thing has nearly as much oomph, from a brightness perspective, as my cruddy old Acer which was rated at about 1000 lumen. Nice. And if you tinker with the settings, it gets even better.

One note is the short throw distance / throw ratio. The other reviewers aren't kidding about this, and neither am I. I need to get a bigger projector screen now, because the unit doesn't have a zoom dial to let you adjust the throw distance. I think the ratio is somewhere around 1.5. The native resolution on this is 800x600, if I'm not mistaken, but it'll accept signals with 1024x768 and scale it.

The build itself is kind of slick. It's a handy little unit, about the size of your hand if you are a giant, otherwise about the size of an three VHS tapes stacked on top of each other. But a lot curvier and sexier.

I haven't tried the USB feature (Divx playback), but based on the menus, I would guess that there's a photo browser and video browser built in somewhere. I haven't exactly read the manual yet because I've been too busy watching movies & TV on this thing.

So, here's my take on this: this is the future, folks. LEDs have finally gotten bright enough and cheap enough for prime-time use in consumer and portable business projectors. Would I like a couple hundred lumen more? Sure. But if you're an early adopter, have at it -- this is a bright-enough, affordable, feature-rich unit that you can carry in your purse (or in your satchel, if you're a man too embarassed to say that you carry a purse).

If you're not an early adopter, and you can wait, then wait -- I have no doubt these things will get better over even the next 2-3 years. I'm amazed at how far this has come from a the Mitsubishi PK20 LED projector of only 2-3 years ago, which was rated at 20 lumens and produced a horribly dim image.

Oh by the way, speaking of which, if I were in the market for a business projector to take on the road, this would be it. With this particular throw ratio (i.e. big image at short distance), and lightweight package, unless you really really need a battery-powered projector, I'd go with this one.

I bought this in hopes to use it to show movies and computer presentations to small-medium sized gatherings. After I purchased and realized, I also started using it as a TV projector, to watch sporting events and such. I was particularly interested in this one because of the LED bulb's long life and it is mercury-free.

While it seems the brightness of a 200 lumen projector is everyone's concern, I was very satisfied with the brightness. It wouldn't work outside in daylight but that's the case with most projectors. It's fine indoors and if you turn out the light at night, it's amazingly bright.

The colors are very vivid. There are some issues here, though. Sometimes there are almost TOO vivid. Like if you're watching a sporting event, and one of the teams has red uniforms, they are glowing, almost neon. There are a few color settings and I've tried them all, but none seem to be just right and the main issue is that certain colors are too vivid.

another issue with the colors is what I'd call "bleeding". greens and reds seem to "bleed" past the outline of actual object a bit. Again this makes them look like they are glowing.

these issues would seem minor, except when it comes to the actual resolution. I had hoped I would be able to project this onto a large screen, but the 640K resolution is really inadequate. I haven't taken measurements on what is acceptable, but if you try to project larger than roughly 4 feet wide, things start to get pixelated and blurry. In fact if you're watching a football or baseball game it's hard to see where the ball is sometimes. Same goes for PC presenations, anything small (like the words under the icons on your desktop) will be quite blurry and hard to read, unless you move the projector closer and reduce the size of the screen, and by then you are approaching the question of why get this when you could just get a large flatscreen monitor/tv. However the portability factor is great with this, so it's worth considering if you're willing to sacrifice video quality for portability.

So I would say the limiting factor here is not the brightness, but the rather the resolution. I can easily pull the projector far enough away where it's still plenty bright but it's annoyingly pixelated and blurry. And the color rendition needs some tweaking.

I would not recommend this unit to a friend until/unless I explained these things, and let them know the shortcomings before they purchase. There is a use for this unit; it is bright; and the colors are vivid. But it has limitations and some shortcomings.

The GREAT thing about it is the versatility. Very small and lightweight. Connects to a standard camera tripod or ceiling mount (I bought the one listed as a "people also bought..." for less than $10 and it works great for mounting on the celing). And the USB connection is GREAT. I put AVI files on a thumb drive and then I don't need a DVD player, laptop, or anything to watch a movie.

I like the product, but i'm not head over heels for it...I think it is "almost" a great product. It just needs better resolution (double would be good) and to work out some bugs with the color rendition. Hopefully in another few years all projectors will have the LED bulbs that are better for the environment and last longer. (and the price will come down too!)

I just got this projector about 3 weeks ago and I've watched over 15 movies on it.... and loving it!

Since it is only a 200 lumen projector you cannot expect the brightest image but I assure you it will be just fine during night on any room. It is quite light and has all the rings and bells you need. I think is awesome the fact it includes an HDMI and a USB port. You can record a movie and save it as .mpeg, .avi, etc format and simply watch it directly from your USB flash drive. The internal speakers are very rudimentary so you can simply hook up stand alone speakers to its audio jack and you are ready to roll.

The only complain I have on it is the original color configuration. The red is too bright compared to the other colors, so it needs manual adjustment that can be annoying.

At the moment I can display a nice 72" screen and it is simply great for movies. Just found out that if you don't want to spend the money on a projection screen your best bet is purchasing a white blackout curtain liner. It is rubberized fabric that happens to work quite decently with the light reflected on it. Give it a try, I just spent $18 on this liner.

On the cosmetics ... I wish it was black. But I do find its design quite slick.

Overall I'm quite satisfied with it. It offers you what is supposed to and the peace of mind to know there is no need to change the bulb has a price. LED projectors do not have a Lamp hours of usage / hours left counter on it ... simply because it does not need it ... and that is simply convenient!

My first projector so I can't really compare to others. I got this mainly because this reads USB media (even some portable HDs). Not having to utilize a laptop on the road or at a friend's house convinced me. Maybe there are bulb projectors with this feature, but I had a hard time finding one. Overall, I'm extremely happy with this. Definitely bright enough and the picture quality is excellent.
Pros:
- reads USB drives
- CHEAP!
- 30,000 Hours
- Short Throw
- Truly portable
- Minimal fan noise
- Screw/tripod mount
Cons (most annoying listed first):
- No zoom on lens
- No back light on remote
- Just a little brighter would be nice
- Focus ring too small and adjustment range limited
- RGB port shared with VGA
- No S-Video
- No carrying case
- Black or a darker color would have been more professional looking

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Updated Aug 29, 2010 - Dropped to 4 stars
More cons...
- the fan is actually quite noisy (more than a laptop) and it's unnecessary for the amount of heat this thing produces (much less than a laptop).
- plastic tripod mount
- poor lens cover design, breaks easily
- poor and slow customer service
after 6 months of use, the tripod mount screw rings started to strip so the projector couldn't be mounted anymore. Aparently, it's made of plastic. The lense cover clips also broke so it's become useless as well. I did send it (I paid) to LG for repairs and the mount is new now (seems like metal). I forgot to mention the lens cover problem and that didn't get fixed. The ship back took 3.5 weeks. Thinking about all the trouble, I decided to live with no cover.