Optima Gt5500 Ultra Short Throw Projector Announced

So it is that time once more, another Optoma projector review, this fourth dimension, this is a flake of a monster, and I mean that in the best way possible. Whereas the ML750st I reviewed before this was small and cute and even came with a carrying case, the GT5500 weighs in at merely under 5 kilograms, and is
big, there is a reason for its size though, this is a UST projector or an ultra-curt throw projector. How brusk of a throw? Well to get a 100” project epitome yous need the projector to be a scant 30cm (11.8 inches) away from the wall. That. is. Insane.

Disclaimer: Optoma sent united states of america the GT5500 to review complimentary of charge, we had information technology for a niggling nether a month. No budgetary compensation has swapped hands and no entity other than editors at MTT are reviewing this before it goes live. Due to unforeseen circumstances with an SD card, there are unfortunately no alive images of the projector and very few of the projection. Whilst this is an inconvenience, nosotros still call up you deserved to take a review.

Specifications

• Texas Instruments DarkChip 3 DLP flake
• 3500 ANSI Lumens
• 1920x1080p resolution
• 16w speaker
• I/O
  • 2x HDMI 1.4
  • 2x VGA
  • Composite
  • 2x 3.5mm audio in
  • three.5mm audio out
  • RJ45
  • RS232
  • USB-A
• 33ms Input latency
• Ability consumption
  • 0.5w in standby
  • 310w in loftier brightness
  • 260w Eco mode

For more than specifications, hitting up the Optoma product page for the GT5500

here

Hardware

Let’due south just become this out of the fashion, the GT550 is


big

, at 310x385x120mm you’re going to want to make certain you accept some serious space for this brute. One time you get past the size of the unit of measurement it’s actually quite nice and strangely gets out of the way.
Information technology’s large and heavy, sure, but the matte white plastic actually does just blend in with almost furniture, which is appreciated

If y’all’re looking at the GT550 from the front (if you’re sitting downwardly) it’s quite arid, with a grey plastic grille and an IR emitter for the included remote (I’ll become to this later), this simple pattern goes well with the fact that it is away from the vivid light emitting parts of the projector, so once again it fades away, getting out of your fashion so the projection screen takes over.

Left manus side is even more barren than the front with just the plastic grey grille , though this is perforated for amend ventilation. Flipping 180 to the right hand side, we are but slightly less boring with a nice big cutout of the gray grilles for the projection lens associates, merely otherwise, you know the drill, the grey grilles go out of the mode and fade in in a dark room.

Instead of me talking about every single piece of I/O on the rear of the GT5500, I’ll place an image of the rear then yous can see the plentiful I/O. Personally, I would take prefered at to the lowest degree one more HDMI port in place of the VGA, preferably two HDMI. Another wish would be that a manufacturer of Projectors, and a great 1 similar Optoma, to work with Google to become the cast protocol broiled into the projector, kind of how Vizio did with their 2016 TVs, so if you just wanted to cast to the projector, no more separate purchases or dongles etc, merely connect the Projector to the cyberspace via the ethernet jack on the back or maybe add in WiFi, and boom off to the races.

The Height of the GT5500 is a piffling weird, you have this trapezoidal shape cut out for the lens assembly, which looks strange, merely I get information technology. Then at that place are the buttons, for the ability, source, brightness and temperature, but there is this other section, that I take absolutely no idea what it is for or what it does, just since I did non own this nor have money to buy i to accept it apart, I just left it as is.

All oh my time with the GT5500 was on a chest of drawers considering A) I wasn’t going to ceiling mountain a projector that I unfortunately wasn’t allowed to continue and B) I don’t trust myself ceiling mounting something 5kg when the projector costs over a k.

Projection

In a discussion, amazing, which if y’all’ve read any of my Optoma reviews, you shouldn’t be surprised by. Optoma take a very well regarded name and reputation when information technology comes to projectors, because they’ve earned information technology, they’ve earned the reputation of having great looking projection, with great colour, express fringing or haloing and more and the GT5500 takes that to the adjacent level with an an absolutely insane brusque throw setup that i’ll certainly miss.

Actually, the headline feature of the GT5500 is ane of the things that makes me well-nigh hesitant to recommend it to normal people wanting a projector. Whilst in theory, 30cm from the wall for a 100” image is crawly, and information technology is, have a sit downward and remember just how many places in your business firm could


really


support that. I don’t have a pocket-size house (not bragging, we were just really lucky when nosotros bought) just even then, with the way we have the rooms ready, just one of the potential 8 rooms could actually adapt the GT5500.

100” is a large epitome, like seriously big, and information technology’d be perfect if I could place it on the wall where my fireplace is, because the chimney breast could concur that image, sadly at that place is actually nowhere for the projector to sit down that is almost 30cm from that wall, once more without ceiling mounts. One time I found that i room though, and had it set upwardly, the GT5500 looks admittedly phenomenal.

So y’all’ve measured your home/living room/human being cave etc to find out if it fits, yous’ve scrounged together a grand for the GT5500 and it’s arrived, you plug it all in and now what? Well, at present you lot sit down and nigh effortlessly lookout some of the greatest recorded media you lot will have always seen.

People need to terminate thinking of resolution every bit the exist all and end all, particularly when it comes to projectors, Optoma proved that when I got the ML750st at at 80” I had to make sure it was but a 720p projector, because even with my glasses on, I couldn’t tell. 100” at 1080p sounds like you lot’ll be able to see each and every pixel, but at even a suboptimal viewing altitude you lot still can’t and equally long every bit you aren’t watching some very poorly recorded/encoded media, this is likely the best manner to view films and TV unless you happen to have a 4K OLED tv in the other room.

Watching the Blu-Ray of


The Matrix


on the GT5500 was an feel I’ll never forget, fifty-fifty in a pitch black room, which is non a requirement on the GT5500 by the mode, the nighttime scenes with Neo and Trinity were just encapsulating, despite the fact that it is an older film and the special effects aren’t every bit expert as what nosotros have now, the Blu-Ray master of it was merely impeccable. But mayhap I should have tried something more than modern, so I plopped Ten-Men Apocalypse in at that place (I will not hear yous say bad things almost Ten-Men films, they all serve a purpose) and Oh my, I was just every bit blown abroad here. This 1080p Blu-Ray on a 1080p projector looks insane. Yous could have told me this was a 4K remaster on a 4K projector and I would have probable believed you. Colours popped where they needed to and were subdued where they needed to, dark scenes were night, and Apocalypse’ peel was all kinds of blue that I didn’t know I could meet.

I mentioned that You lot don’t need to exist in a dark room to watch the GT5500 I meant it, the 3500 ANSI lumens are the real bargain, whilst defunction open and living room lights on might be a bit of a stretch, one or the other is certainly doable, and defunction open is something I did relatively often. Whilst yous will yet get the absolute all-time motion picture in a dark room in the evening, if this is going to exist your TV replacement, you don’t probable only watch TV at 10pm in the evening with all the curtain closed and the lights off (no judging if you lot practice. Well, a little) And then it is squeamish to know that the GT5500 can stand up to ambient lite conditions without becoming a washed out mess of an image making you wonder exactly what you spent all that money on.

Audio

The built in 16w speaker is only okay, but clearly the bulk of the cost of the GT5500 gets spent on the lamp and the lens assembly, then you’ll probable want to throw in a audio bar if you’ve got 1 or if yous’ve got a full environment sound system that’d get a long way to increasing the immersiveness of the GT5500’south feel.

I plugged a pair of PC speakers into the GT5500, they weren’t great, just the stereo setup let me split the audio into left and right channels instead of the mono speaker on the GT5500 itself. So whilst the sounds wasn’t much louder, information technology was cleaner, clearer and more than separated, and then vocals were more enjoyable.

The GT5500 has a standard iii.5mm sound in, but sadly no Optical or Toslink jacks so you can’t use those, but the more standard three.5mm based solutions will work perfectly fine.

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous in projector reviews basically means two things heat/racket and the remote, and I’ll speak about the remote first because I have less to say about it. I don’t like  the remote the GT5500 comes with, with how much the rest of the GT5500 feels similar a TV replacement and like  information technology deserves to £1050 price tag, the remote feels cheap, very cheap, I can’t quite put my finger on one singular feature that I dislike, merely the mushy buttons, the weird blue backlighting, the seemingly duplicated features and much more, the remote works, but it is a bad remote, and I expected more than from a device that costs as much as the GT5500 does.

On to heat and noise, and for the most role, this is a solid car, bar i small issue. When you plow the GT5500 off, the fans ramp up for a couple of seconds, but sound like a Boeing 787 taking off, they are monstrously loud for those few seconds. During use, you’ll be unlikely to hear the GT5500’s fans over the sound from the speakers, which is great, and when it’southward off it’s, well off. But for last ditch effort to get equally much heat every bit possible out of the chassis earlier it turns off is quite jarring if you are not expecting it, maybe some sort of warning on the screen saying:

“Annotation, fans will ramp up earlier shutting down, this is normal, information technology is to vent excess oestrus”

Something like that wouldn’t go amiss.

Determination

My Reviews of Optoma projectors normally end with Buy THIS NOW IF YOU Can, and the GT5500 get’s and so shut to that recommendation once more, and strangely, it is not the cost tag that stops me plopping that in here, but rather the headline feature, the Ultra-short throw. Wit other projectors there are ways to make them work for you, the ML750st was so small and light that mounting it on the wall was neither a hurting nor a worry, the HD28DSE, on the other hand, was big plenty to go on the other side of the room, just if the size was wrong, the zoom band on the lens assembly made compensation easier without resorting to digital cropping as on the GT5500.

If you lot have the space for the GT5500, and you


know


you won’t always move it, I can wholeheartedly recommend you buy information technology. Just if that seems like a few too many catches for you lot, Optoma make a veritable smorgasbord of other projectors, I’m sure one of them will pique your interest, Optoma continues to make swell projectors, and the GT5500 is a phenomenal projector, just make sure you have to room before buying one.