Philips Screeneo HDP1590 review: Big-screen ambitions, small returns

Projectors had been mostly absent from that pacesetter of home entertainment technology, the Consumer Electronics Show. They've had a bit of a resurgence recently though, led by splashy, space-saving devices such as the LG Hecto and the Sony 4K Ultra Short Throw Projector . Both are designed to deliver huge-screen experiences without eating up your whole room.

5.0

Philips Screeneo HDP1590

The Good

The <b>Philips Screeneo HDP1590</b> is portable and designed to project against less-than-optimal surfaces from very close distances; offers quite a few features including Android apps, Bluetooth, and Miracast; low latency makes it attractive to gamers.

The Bad

Subpar picture quality characterized by very poor light output and washed-out black levels; gaudy color with inadequate control to fix it; Android menu can be tricky to navigate.

The Bottom Line

The Philips Screeneo HDP1590 boasts a decent number of features including an ultra-short throw distance but offers below-average performance for the price.

The Philips Screeneo debuted at CES 2014 with the same promise, for a price that's by far the least expensive of the bunch. But with the price reduction inevitably comes compromise, and in this case I think Philips compromised too much.

The DLP-based LED-lit Screeneo HDP1590 certainly offers more features than your average projector, including Bluetooth, DLNA, an Android operating system (complete with apps!), and 3D playback, but image quality takes a beating. For the $1,800 price, performance is worse than average and little can be done to improve things using the limited controls.

From a pure bang-for-buck perspective, the Philips clearly falls short, but even its extensive feature set isn't as appealing as it seems on paper. The biggest issue is that this is far from the "plug-and-play" solution it should be: the menu system is a patchwork quilt, and some of the streaming features simply aren't very easy to use.

The Screeneo is sort of a fun all-in-one concept, but the price needs some adjustment. In the realm of budget short-throws, the BenQ W1080ST is the far superior value, and the traditional long-throw Home Cinema 2030 delivers a better picture for half the price of the Screeneo.

Design

Ever wanted a projector that looked like a laser printer? Well, has Philips got the product for you! The Screeneo is a smallish, gray box that even has what appears to be a paper feeder. In fact, it's the slot for the lens.

Designed to sit fairly close to a wall, the Philips can only be situated in one way, with the connections and leather carry strap on the wall-facing side. Meanwhile, the onboard speakers face you, and underneath the Philips logo is a hidden section that holds more connections as well as the focus control.

Moving to the top of the device, you'll find the menu buttons and the all-important power button. For some reason, this button needs to be held down to turn the unit on, and annoyingly, if you turn the unit off via the same button, you can't then use the remote to turn it back on. Pro tip: don't use the power button.

The remote control is relatively large, reasonably ergonomic, and certainly has a lot of keys. Unfortunately, especially for a projector remote, it doesn't have a backlight.

Unfortunately, Philips' menu system can be a little bit of a mess. It consists of a custom interface layered over Android, and the only control method is via the remote, making it hard to use some things -- especially tasks that involve the virtual keyboard such as the Web browser or enabling Wi-Fi. Sometimes, for example, you have to use "Tab" on the virtual keyboard to navigate instead of simply using the Up or Down keys.

Features

With a maximum distance of 18 inches from the projection surface it's clear this isn't a short-throw projector like the BenQ W1080ST, but a new breed of ultra-short-throw devices in the vein of the LG Hecto.

The Screeneo is unusual in that it uses a combination of DLP technology and LED illumination. The LEDs allow a TV-like lifespan of 30,000 hours, so you'll never need to change a lamp.

While it's priced like a midrange projector, the Philips, sadly, is no videophile's delight, but thankfully it knows it. For example, the Screeneo's "wall color" presets actively encourage its users to use walls as a projection surface.

The Philips features an unusual resolution of 1,280x800 which means that all content (barring specific PC-based stuff) will feature black bars top and bottom . While you can block off the projection into 1280 x 720 (720p) -- with a flock-edged projection screen perhaps -- be aware that you will obscure some of the menu by doing so

Philips is positioning the Screeneo as a television replacement, and the European version we tested includes a tuner and other add-ons such as Bluetooth and Miracast. At the time of this review, Philips' representative was uncertain if an over-the-air tuner would be included on the US version, but he did assure us the two versions are otherwise identical.

I was glad to see the projector includes a single pair of active 3D glasses in the box for watching 3D movies. They're DLP Link-branded units, so the Screeneo should be compatible with other like-branded specs, too.

Smart features: The projector uses Android 4.2 and promises attendant features including DLNA, Web browser and "apps." The apps themselves are fairly spartan and hilariously include "email." Only YouTube is of any note. There's no access to an app store such as Google Play, and while there is an ApkInstaller to load new apps from a USB disk(!), this is very bare-bones and not recommended for most people. Feeling adventurous, I actually tried loading the Google Play Webstore as an APK, but sadly, it didn't function.

As the Philips uses a custom version of Android, some parts of the interface are tricky, in part relying on a terrible combination of onscreen keyboard and D-pad. For example when entering the Wi-Fi password, you have to press Tab and then Enter for each selection on the dialog box instead of the arrow keys.

Some of the streaming features via Miracast worked but only sporadically, despite the latest patch promising improved performance.

Setup: The Screeneo lacks most of the usual setup functions seen on most home projectors, namely zoom, lens shift, and even adjustable feet. Its makers expect you to mount the projector on a flat table or stand directly in front of the projection surface. The sole position-based adjustment is a focus control.

The projector can give you an image between 50 inches and 100 inches from a minimum of four inches away (and a maximum of 18 inches). Moving the unit farther from the wall acts as a the most manual of zoom controls, expanding the image.

Picture settings: The HDP1590 comes with a number of presets, but tweakers, beware: like most Philips devices it will revert to Manual mode once you adjust any settings. Most of the presets are very dim, and even at its brightest the projector barely meets our recommended settings in a dark room.

One of the weirdest omissions is any kind of traditional color control. While it has a rudimentary Cool, Normal, and Warm color temperature adjustments, it offers only presets for color, all of which are quite gaudy. A number of gamma presets are available, but all are a bit strange and emphasize blacker-than-black.

While we initially tested the unit at the maximum 100-inch diagonal, the brightness was very low with a maximum of 12.15fL (foot-Lambert). As a result, we changed to an 80-inch size in order to get a bit more light out of the box. We didn't want to go any smaller than that, however, because for this price at 70 inches, you might as well get an actual TV .

Connectivity: The unit comes with plenty of connections including three HDMI (two back, one front), three USB (two back, one front), AV-out, digital optical, and VGA. It also sports dual-band Wi-Fi and a LAN port.

Picture quality

The Philips is meant to be fun. And what do we equate with fun? Cartoons! Sadly, the image quality of the Screeneo is only good for bright animation and not dark material like the definitely un-kid-friendly "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Colors are wildly inaccurate and cannot be corrected due to the aforementioned absence of a color control. Black levels are poor, but shadow detail is OK if you use the "wrong" presets and don't set the Brightness as per the industry standard.

If you want picture quality and not simply convenience, then don't bother kicking tires in this parking lot; head over to the BenQ dealership and check out the W1080 and W1070.

Black levels: With the brightness correctly set, the Philips exhibited the same crushing problems I saw with the ViewSonic Pro8200 . The difference between them, however, was that the makers of the Philips were seemingly aware that it can't reproduce low-level shadow detail properly and thus set its default modes to cater for that. Correspondingly, I put the projector back in the default Manual mode that tested the best and continued my observations.

In this "cheat" mode, shadow detail was actually quite good, but black levels did suffer. The hilltop scene from "Harry Potter" was finally visible again after changing the modes back, but it lacked the depth of the comparable BenQ due to inferior black levels.

In its Brightest mode, the projector wasn't what you could actually call "bright," reaching only 17fL on our screen. This is perhaps why Philips decided against including the lumens rating in its specifications list. The BenQ 1080ST can get more than three times as bright.

Color accuracy: Do you like Vivid mode on a television set? (Don't answer -- it's a trap!) Then you'll love the Philips HDP1590: all vivid all the time! With the inability to change colors the results were really gaudy when compared to the BenQ W1080ST.

The shot of the mother lying on the grass in "The Tree of Life" is a good measure of blues, skin tones, and greens, and on the Philips the color palette is a lurid, "poster paints" one. While the grass looks natural, skin tones were tanned reddish-brown (actress Jessica Chastain is porcelain white), and her dress was a 24-hour diner's neon sign.

In "Star Trek," the sky was overly blue and the red Starfleet uniforms too vivid, with faces looking a bit crushed as well.

Meanwhile in the final, final "Harry Potter," some of the low-level colors were a bit off with a lovely cyan highlight reflecting off Voldemort's balding, bice bonce that I'd never seen before.

Video processing: The Philips performed very well here, only failing one test, but as this is a 720p display, it's not surprising that it couldn't complete the 1080i test. Motion resolution was fairly poor, though at only 300 lines, which could mean movement isn't as crisp as a plasma or other "instantaneous" display. If you're a gamer, though, you should be pretty interested to hear the projector boasts one of the lowest lags we've seen on a large display, at 17.3 milliseconds.

3D: 3D replay was acceptable with very little ghosting visible on our punishing "Hugo" tests, but the image had the same issue with color and showed more crushing of detail than in 2D. The images of Hugo running through the gears of the station clock were overly dark, and colors had the same oversaturated look as 2D.

Read more about how we test TVs.