MINI HD LED Projector Review – TMY V08

This post contains affiliate links. Please see my full disclosure here.

Introduction

My daughter purchased this projector as a gimmick for creating her special ghostly effects for Halloween. As I was quite impressed by its projection quality I just had to review it for watching movies on.

Before I launch into this let me first point out that all my comments regarding this projectors image are all relative to my ISF calibrated JVC DLA-RS640. I currently have no light meter and my comments are all based upon my test discs, real movies and my visual acuity. It is also important to note that there are no user accessible controls for adjusting RGB gain and offset to dial in color balance or adjust gamma. Even if they were accessible nobody is going to pay four to five times the price of the projector to attempt to have this mini projector ISF calibrated!

Here are the projector salient features:

1. Native HD: 1280×720 P24/60
2. Supports full HD: 1920X1080 P24/60 (no 4K)
3. 7500 lumens LED light source (not brightness)
4. Native fixed contrast ratio: 4000:1
5. Supports 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios
6. LCD panel
7. Connectivity: HDMI, VGA, AV, USB Headphone port & TF card slot
8. Built in 3 watt stereo speakers (Dolby & DTS decoding)
9. Noise: 48dB measured at 3 feet using slow and C weighting
10. Multi-position installation capability with image flip.

Equipment used for this review:

1. Da-Lite DaMat 2.35:1 screen masked to 16:9 with a diagonal of 80″ and a gain of 1.
2. Oppo 203 running either 1080P60 or 720P60 (all video enhancements off)
3. Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark test disc
4. Digital Video Essentials HD Basics test disc
5. Darbee Darblet video processor

All tests but one were carried out at 1080P60 using either Dolby or DTS 5.1/7.1.

Projection Brightness

My A/V room is totally light controlled and to be brutally honest this projectors image brightness cannot support very much room light or a much larger screen. Unfortunately the the supplied screen was left at my daughters distant condo so I had no option but to use my own screen for this test. Rumor has it that the supplied screen doesn’t do the projector justice and a low cost higher gain (1.5- 1.8) screen maybe worth looking at. High gain screens have their own issues, so be careful not to buy a screen with a very high gain or you could end up with a very restricted viewing angle, poor of axis colors and “hot spotting”. Their are also various paint coatings that can be applied to walls that work well for screen surfaces. Make sure that the screens surround is black to reduce light reflections and maximize contrast. 

The SMPTE recommended brightness for watching a movie in a light controlled room is approximately 16Foot Lamberts (ftL). With the LED light source having a claimed total light output of 7500 lumens, the industry ANSI brightness would normally be approximately 300 ANSI lumens (7500×0.04).  For my 19 sqft 16:9 screen that would create about 300/19 =15.8 Foot Lamberts (ftL) which is vey close to the required 16ftL. However, TMY states that this projector only generates approximately 180ANSI lumens. This equates to about 9.5 ftL for my screen size and that level of brightness looked to be about correct when compared to my JVC that is calibrated for 16ftL. Despite this lower brightness the image is still quite enjoyable in a dark environment. A higher gain screen would improve perceived brightness.

See this article at BENQ projectors to understand the difference between ANSI lumens, LED lumens and light source lumens.

Installation & Operation

The V08 can be installed in any of the usual locations using the Projection Mode sub-menu:

As there is no zoom function the image size depends just how far the projector is from the screen. For best and most uniform focus try to set the projector at right angles to the center of the screen. If that is not possible you do have a front height adjuster and +- 15 degrees of keystone correction.

Once installed center the image on the screen, use the keystone correction to get the sides of the image vertical and then adjust the focus for maximum clarity using the Main Menu, Settings or a test signal, not a moving image. You should be able to clearly see all the pixels, and I found that the focus uniformity from edge to edge and top to bottom to be quite acceptable. Remember that these are VERY inexpensive optics so don’t expect perfection!

Here are some menu views:

Sorry but the soft images are mainly due to image scaling.

• Main Menu

Input Menu

• Settings (All Video)

Color Temp Menu

• Audio Menu (All Audio)

Sound Modes Menu

• Options Menu

Access to all menus and functions is via either the supplied remote or through the controls on the top of the projector.

Setup could not have been simpler. As can be seen above the remote is very simple. Once the projector is positioned, just turn on and use the source button to select your input source. I only tried HD Blu-ray via the HDMI input. My daughter did use the USB that worked without any issues. Selecting other inputs/media types give access to other menu functions associated with that type media. 

The four video settings under the Picture Mode:

I felt that the first three modes were just unnatural so I opted for User which allows you to adjust all the menu video settings and “dial-in” the projector using a test disc. These video parameters are unavailable if you select one of the three pre-set video modes. The good news is that if you do not have a test disc the default settings were not too far off.  See my preferred User settings below:

My User Settings:

• Contrast – 35
• Brightness – 55
• Color – 60
• Tint – 50
• Sharpness 10
• Color temperature – Medium
• Noise Reduction – OFF
• Aspect ratio – 16X9

It was interesting to note that based upon the HD test discs the User factory default settings were quite close. However, the noise reduction (NR) should be turned OFF and the sharpness lowered to at least 10 in order to prevent objectionable edge enhancement issues.

The projector offers three Aspect Ratios (scaling modes) from within the Options Menu:

1. Full
2. 4:3
3. 16:9

The projector adequately handles both 1920x1080P60 and P24 signals and scales them to fit the 1280X720 LCD panels creating vertical stretch and a slight softening of the image. I recommend that you use 16×9 or 4X3 as required. Feeding a 720P60 signal to the V08 correctly pixel mapped it using the whole LCD panel and creating a slightly sharper image. I would highly recommend that once the projector is correctly calibrated that any scaling or other video adjustments are executed in the player as most Blu-ray players video processing will generally be better than what the V08 has to offer. It should also be noted that this player supports below black signals making gray scale adjustment much easier. 

SMPTE color bars and Pluge all looked acceptable with colors being just a little desaturated. Gray scale bars were all uniform and clearly visible after adjustments. Other tests signals showed good black level and low low level shadow detail. Unfortunately peak white levels showed a little compression that could not be removed without impacting the projectors brightness. This however was not too visible on real material. Overall the image on medium color temperature looked good. 

The V08 does accept both Dolby and DTS 5.1/7.1 and decode and down-mix all channels to a stereo signal to drive its internal speakers and the output connector. While the two stereo speakers work you need a quite room to be able to clearly hear them as they are not very loud, even at full volume, and excessive bass boast causes distortion. I would recommend adding some form of additional amplification for most venues.

The image showed one dead pixel (a black pixel “hole”) in the upper right hand corner. This was not noticeable in normal viewing. 

Finally I used my Darbee Darblet processor set to 30% to pre-process the 1080P60 HDMI HD signal prior to sending it to the V08. This provided a worthwhile improvement in contrast, depth of field and sharpness. If you can pick up a cheap used one it might be worth adding or you may want to take that money and look at buying the DBPOWER 8000L or CLOKOWE HD 8500 instead; see my comments below.

Whats in the Box:

Full Specifications:

Final Comments

This projector may not be in the same class as my JVC but it provides a respectable image for its price, resolution, contrast ratio and brightness. This is good value at this price point and is a great gift to all those wanting to create their own Home Theater to watch movies and play games, are on a very limited budget, and want to enter the big screen arena. Depending upon the screen size you will generally need the viewing areas light to be controlled. 

For a little more, projectors like the DBPOWER 8000L and CLOKOWE HD 8500  are more upscale models and are claimed to have native 1080P displays with 8000+ lumens (approx. 200ANSI lumens). I suspect that these would be a much better buy for modern HD 1080P movie playback and gaming if your budget will stretch just a little. The lower cost TMY V58  may also be an option but it is unclear if it really is NATIVE 1920x1080P. 

Click on this Amazon link to see V08 and other similarly priced HD projectors with native 1920X1080P resolution, more features and increased brightness. 

Recommended for the price.

Buy from Amazon here.