Philips Screeneo UL5 Smart Review – TRIPLE LASER + DLP = AMAZING
This tiny little thing, believe it or not, is a triple laser DLP projector, and it’s mighty impressive. This is the Philips Screeneo UL5 Smart, an almost pocketable projector with insane contrast, and even more insane colours – like this projector is better in the colours department than anything I’ve ever tested, it’s that insane. And yet, it’s a projector! So strap in to find out why this thing is as impressive as it is, and if it’s worth either of its possible price tags.
This little guy is an ultra short-throw projector. Like, the max recommended distance from the wall is just 56 centimetres, which should deliver you a 120 inch frame. Philips recommends a 100 inch size though, although this can go down to effectively touching the wall for a 40 inch display. It does have autofocus built in, and will autofocus every time you start the projector, so you don’t have to have it in the exact same place each time you fire it up, or spend time fiddling with the focus. It’s pretty seamless really.
As for the light source, that is a laser – well actually three lasers, red, green and blue – which if you use a fast enough camera you can just about make out the laser scanning across the frame. That light is then bounced off of a DLP chip – an 0.23 inch DMD Texas Instruments chip specifically. DLP is a really cool technology as it’s literally microscopic mirrors built into a silicon chip that can be individually controlled, making for a much better contrast ratio, and in this case the combination of very pure laser light means you get incredibly accurate and vibrant colours. My cameras don’t quite do this justice, since it is flashing the red, then green, then blue components of the image, but my god does this look good to the eye. Even on my nasty cream wall this looks great, so I can only imagine what it’d look like on a proper screen! For some context, Philips claims this will cover 150% of the DCI P3 spectrum and an amazing 108% of the Rec2020 colour space. Most displays I get in to test peak at 95% of the DCI P3 spectrum, and sit at roughly 70% of Rec2020, so to cover over 100% is frankly incredible. Unfortunately I don’t have suitable test equipment to confirm that, so if you do want to pick one of these up I’d highly recommend checking out some more seasoned projector reviewers who do have the equipment to test this thing fully.
The extra good news about this being a laser projector is that Philips rates this at over 25,000 hours of operation before lamp failure. That’s almost three years of non-stop usage, so I think you’ll be good on that front. The only real downsides here are the resolution and refresh rate. At just 1080p60, this isn’t exactly fast or sharp – especially at a 100 inch screen size. You can see the pixels here, especially with a larger screen size. Of course from a distance it’s perfectly fine, but especially since I’ve only recently had several 4K60 projectors in, it’s hard for me to not notice the lacking crispness. Once you’re engrossed in a film or show you stop noticing it, and I’d be hard-pressed to say this was an actively bad experience, but I can’t help but wish this was 4K instead. Hell, even 1440p!
One thing that doesn’t disappoint is the contrast – in a dark room you can only just make out the excess light in darker areas. Philips claims a 1800:1 contrast ratio, which is better than most IPS displays, and frankly I believe it. It isn’t quite OLED levels of deep blacks, but it’s as good as a lot of monitors, if not better in some cases. Sadly this only offers 550 lumens of light output so you will want to be using this in a darker room, but when you do, man does it look good. Seriously, content on this looks amazing – it’s rich, vibrant and just beautiful to look at.
If you were considering playing some games on this thing, don’t. My Open Source Response Time Tool reckons you’ll see around 200 milliseconds of latency – that’s 12 frames at 60 hertz, also known as completely unplayable. I tried TrackMania, and oh boy was that a bad time. I’d full steer right, and could practically count the time between steering and the car actually moving that way. My god it’s a bad time. Stick to movies and TV…
Part of that might be down to the built in processor, Philips says this is an AMT972-B, which is the same chip you’ll find in their Screeneo U4 – a now two generation old product, and two years old too. The fact that the processing is all built in means that at some point it’s going to get too old to receive updates. Couple that with the fact it’s not exactly brand new and I’d be concerned that its clock is already ticking. As for the software, this is just Android – but not Android TV – much like a lot of projectors, this is a custom Android tablet ROM with a proprietary app store that just side-loads the apps. I’m never a big fan of this, as it’s painfully insecure and prone to outright breaking. It does work, it’s reasonably responsive, and can play back media via YouTube or Plex just fine, but I’d be a touch suspicious of it personally. Oh, and if you are interested, this has two 3 watt speakers built in which sound ok, not amazing, but passable. You’d probably want some external speakers for this, although that somewhat defeats the next part, which is that at around one kilogram and only 20 by 10 by 10 centimetres, it’s remarkably portable. It’s just a little brick and can be moved or travelled with pretty easily – especially since it only needs power from the USB type C brick that comes included.
IO wise you’ve got USB C for power in, USB C for DisplayPort ALT mode in, a USB A port for a media device, and one HDMI port. You’ve also got a tripod thread on the bottom should you want to stick it on a tripod. Otherwise, you’ve got a power button on the front, and an IR receiver. You’ll need to use the included remote to control it otherwise – which actually pairs via Bluetooth to the projector which I found interesting. It’s pretty standard, feels fine and is easy enough to use.
As for price, well that’s where this gets interesting. By the time this video goes live I’m pretty sure the IndieGoGo campaign Philips were running for this will have ended. If you scored one from that though, you will have paid around £636, or 42% off. MSRP looks like it’s going to be around £1100, which is quite the increase. I do wonder if you’ll be able to buy this on sale for at least somewhat close to the IndieGoGo amount on, say, Black Friday sales, but here’s the thing. I’m struggling to work out exactly who this is for. It clearly isn’t for me, and I can’t quite picture who’d be willing to spend over a thousand pounds on a 1080p 60 hertz sort-of-portable projector that has stunning colours but sucks for gaming, isn’t super bright but has amazing contrast, and who has enough free wall space to actually project onto – possibly in multiple locations too. With that said, if that sounds like you, first of all please let me know why this thing would work for you in the comments, I’d love to understand more, but second, this is a really impressive bit of kit. It’s hard for me to evaluate the price tags, but it’s clear that at £636 it’s a really impressive bit of kit. At £1,100.. I’m not so sure.
