Aaxa 4k1 Home Entertainment Projector Review - Performance: Brightness, Contrast
| Picture Mode | Lumens |
| Eco | 430 |
| Bright | 590 |
| Boost | 720 |
Rated at 1500 LED lumens, I was curious to measure the aaxa 4k1 mini projector. Most UHP lamp-based projectors and even laser phosphor projectors are measured off of a 9 point system and an average is taken over the image. As LED projectors have come on strong and look so vibrant, this old method has trouble quantifying how bright the LED light looks to your mind.
Enter the Helmholtz-Kohlrausch effect, which you could google and read up on if you would like to. In a nutshell, what it means is that they increased color saturation of the LED light source is makes the image appear brighter to your brain. It is a real effect and the increased saturation also allows you to have a larger image before the colors become washed out because they are so deeply saturated. Feel free to google the H-K effect if you want to read up.
In measuring the aaxa 4k1 mini projector I measured the following brightness levels on a pure white screen, with a 35” Height. The measurements were consistent with most LED projectors on the market. Even better than most that specify LED lumens. The Max brigthness was 720 lumens.
Eco was measured at 520 lumens. With that brightness I was very pleased with my 200" image. The colors were very saturated as you can see in all the images. It is amazing the differences the color saturation makes on our perception. In viewing this projector, I would have easily thought it was 2000 lumens by appearance. The image was bright. There was no lack of color.
The contrast was a sticking point with the aaxa 4k1 mini projector. They are doing their best to pump all the overlapping brightness they can out of the LED’s. As that happens the contrast suffers. I commend aaxa, they did not over inflate the number at all. As you see others do in the industry, an LED light source is instantly on and off, this allows the possibility of an infinite contrast ratio when specifying full on / Full off that you see on most specification sheets.
Color accuracy definitely could be better, but that could be said for a lot of LCD TVs too.
The aaxa 4k1 is rated at 2000:1. Perhaps its a side effect of the DLP TRP 4x pixel shifting. One area where the aaxa 4k1 really struggled was dark scenes. There was a real loss of detail and often it was hard to determine what was taking place. When watching Aquaman, there was a lack of detail in the sub-scene at the beginning of the movie. It was hard to see the intricacies of the submarine pirates black stormtrooper like suits. Same was true when you have a scene that had both vibrant color and shaded areas. There was a scene in Baywatch where there is a bright floating bikini. It just happened that it was a person in the shade and the darker details are hard to see. The bright bikini shines bright though overly saturated and highlights the performance. You can see in the three Bigelow renderings, as you increase the brightness levels, the greys go greenish and some details get lost. While the greens stay super bright. You will want to make a note of that. If gray scale and contrast performance is important to your viewing needs.
When viewing a movie the accompanying audio is as important as the image quality. Cooling is also an important factor in a projector. As the brightness increases, so does the heat.The aaxa 4k1 Mini projector is rated for 30db. Which was about right for eco mode. I took a few measurements from around the projector each at a meter away, at the different brightness levels.
| Picture Mode | DB |
| Eco | 31-34 |
| Bright | 36-38 |
| Boost | 38-42 |
When measuring sound, a decibel is a logarithmic measurement. There is a huge difference between 31 and 38 decibels.
In the review, I mentioned a few times that I used the projector in Eco Mode. It had the best color performance. It also had the lowest noise. When placed in bright mode, the internal speakers became unusable. Then when you stepped up to boost mode, there was no point. Even with surround sound, the fans were very very loud. In order to drown out the fan noise, the surround sound had to be way to loud for comfortable viewing. As I mentioned in the review. Eco Mode, with the standard picture, was the way to go. I was still able to have a 200” Diagonal. That is great for $999 and 4k. Just want to keep it in perspective. Boost mode may give them a higher brightness specification, but the fan noise is signifcant.
That does it for my review of the aaxa 4k1 Mini projector. Take a look at the next page so you can view my summary as I take all this and put it into a nice easy to digest format. Giving you the information you need to make an informed decision.
