Acer H6500

Acer H6500

The Acer H6500 ($900 street) is the latest addition to the slowly growing list of home theater projectors with full 1080p resolution and sub-$1000 prices. More important, if you're in the market for an entry-level projector, it offers enough to make it worth a close look. Rated at 2100 lumens, it's a little bright for a traditional home theater with theater dark lighting, but if you need a projector that's bright enough to set up in a family room or living room with a typical level of ambient light, it could be a good fit. Built around a DLP chip, the H6500's competition includes the ViewSonic Pro8200 ($900 street, 3 stars) and also the Optoma HD20 ($1000 street, 3.5 stars), which was the first 1080p home theater projector in this price range, and is still one of the best. In addition to being inexpensive, all three projectors are small and light. The H6500 in particular weighs only 5.6 pounds. If you don't have room to set it up permanently, you can store it away when you're not using it, and set it up quickly when you need it. You can even carry it to a friend's house for a movie night. Acer makes storing or carrying the projector easy by including a soft carrying case. One complication for using the H6500 this way, however, is that it doesn't have a speaker or even an audio out port to redirect audio from the HDMI port to an external sound system. If you want to set it up only when needed, you'll also have to consider where the sound is going to come from.