Optoma P1 Smart 4K UHD Home Entertainment System at CES 2019

This year’s CES promises to be one full of exciting products for your home theater. Manufacturers from all ends of the earth are unveiling innovative projectors, and, as usual, Optoma is right in the mix. The Optoma P1 Smart 4K UHD Laser Cinema is an ultra short throw projector for the home, and is positively dripping in features. This $2,999 projector is expected to ship late in Q2 of 2019, but that’s no reason not to get excited now! Let’s explore the exciting features of Optoma’s newest home theater projector, shall we?

The Optoma P1 is a 3,000 lumen, ultra short throw projector with 4K UHD resolution. It has a laser light engine, which drastically improves the lifespan of the projector over its lamp-based competition. Where a lamp-based projector loses up to half the brightness over its first thousand hours or so, laser-based projectors lose the same amount of brightness after half its lifespan. For lasers, that tends to be a total of 20,000 to 30,000 hours depending, which means you’ll enjoy a brighter picture with more vibrant color for years longer than a lamp-based model.

Speaking of color, the Optoma P1 has some desired additions for 4K UHD models. It supports HDR10, or High Dynamic Range, on Blu-ray 4K content, so you can watch all of your 4K UHD movies the way they’re meant to be experienced – with more vibrant, deep color. But what if you’re a streamer? No worries, Optoma’s got you covered with HLG, or Hybrid Gamma Log, which is the HDR equivalent for streaming from your favorite platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu.

Art was invited into the Optoma suite at CES to get a closer look at a pre-production unit of the Optoma P1. His take on it? One word: Impressive. Paired with an Ambient Light Rejecting screen specifically designed for ultra short throw projectors, it was "bright and dynamic-looking, even with ambient light in the room." A video of the projector in action is soon to follow, so stay tuned!

This is a rather cool feature of the Optoma P1 Smart 4K UHD Laser Cinema. Being an ultra short throw, having a soundbar included was a smart move on Optoma’s part. Most home entertainment projectors will have on-board speakers with sub-par sound quality (home theater projectors have no built-in speakers), but in the case of the P1, that soundbar is integrated directly into the projector. It acts like a pair of built-in speakers, but promises to far surpass the norm in terms of performance.

The integrated soundbar is designed by NuForce, and is built with the end-user in mind. It’s designed for low-distortion, using individual woofers, aluminum full-range drivers and isolated speaker enclosures. The soundbar offers Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and DTS audio decoding capabilities. This, combined with a projected image of up to 120” diagonally, makes movie watching an immersive experience to be enjoyed by yourself, family, and friends alike.

Be on the lookout for more articles on CES 2019 – we’ll be writing tirelessly all week to give you the full scoop!