Acer K138ST Pocket Projector Review – Picture and Sound Quality

Acer K138ST Pocket Projector Review – Picture and Sound Quality: Out-of-the-Box Picture Quality, Skin Tones, HDTV and Sports, Audio Quality

The Acer K138ST has pretty good color, right out of the box, in a couple of modes. Those modes are Picture and Standard. I favor Picture mode because it seems to have the most natural handling of colors, and is comparable to home entertainment projectors I've seen in the $1000 range, such as Acer's very on H7550ST, which I reviewed earlier this year. The first photos I have in the image player above were shot in Picture mode, while the last five images of Katniss in The Hunger Games show the color in each mode, so that you can easily see the difference between them.

The first of that sequence is of Bright mode, and is surprisingly pink on Katniss' skin. I would never use this mode, personally. One would assume that Bright mode is the brightest mode, and as such, would be strong on greens and yellows. Well, it's neither the brightest mode, nor does it lean toward that side of the color spectrum. The second picture in the player is of Standard mode, which is actually the projector's bright mode. The color here is pretty decent, and I would consider it to be one of the Acer's best modes.

The third photo shows the K138ST's Movie mode, which is also strong on pinks, but not as much as Bright mode. It's a little too saturated in the realm of magentas for me, however, so I do not count it as a "best mode." Some people may like this color correction - I personally do not like the way it looks on skin tones. The fourth photo shows the best mode, Picture. You can see that her skin is a nice beige, the lips, a soft pink, and her eyes are very close to the correct hue of blue. The final mode is Game mode, which is basically a desaturated, less contrasty Picture mode.

As mentioned, in Picture mode, skin tones look pretty great. Everything looks natural and I was most impressed with the color of this mode, particularly its handling of skin tones as compared to the other four modes. In the slider above, I have photos from The Hunger Games, Ender's Game, Casino Royale, Gotham, The Blacklist, and Iron Fist to show how the Acer K138ST does when presented with various skin tones and color correction. Check out the photos to get an idea of the projector's color performance.

Overall, I felt that the color in Picture mode is realistic, which is something I appreciate on a projector of this price point. Sure, it's not as good as say, the $899 Epson Home Cinema 2150 that I recently reviewed, but it is better than both the AAXA M5 and the M6, its direct competitors. The color is one of the major things this Acer has going for it, and though it's not perfect, it's pretty good.

HDTV and sports both look good on the Acer K138ST, though I did have a problem with it. When taking photos of the TV show Gotham, however, I noticed that some of these really dark scenes lack dark shadow detail. As in, I could barely see the outline of Detective Gordon's suit jacket. Add ambient light to the mix, and I doubt you'd be able to make out much in a dark scene, so that pretty much means no movie or cinematic show watching during the day unless the drapes are closed, and you've got good drapes.

I mention this in nearly every review, but I had such an ambient light problem in my living room because of the giant window and horizontal blinds that leaked in between each individual blind. I had to wait until night time to take photos, which did not work for my schedule, and that didn't last long. I bought blackout curtains from Amazon (I got black curtains, but you can choose other dark colors like navy or purple), and a curtain rod for around $35, and installed them immediately. I am planning on getting the same curtains for my kitchen and bedroom windows, as they're awesome for blocking out tons of light.

Anyway, if you've got typical apartment blinds, you're probably going to want to invest in either a bright room projector or those curtains. This little pocket projector isn't bright enough for rooms with more than a modest amount of ambient light, as the light leaking in from the closed kitchen blinds was a bit too much for the Acer K138ST. That said, it's not going to be a great projector to host a Super Bowl party with, though it will be enjoyable in an environment with good control over the lighting. If you don't have that, there are plenty of brighter home entertainment projectors in this price range (ViewSonic and Epson have a few).