Projectors

It could soon be time to trade up from your trusty flatscreen to an ultra-short-throw projector, if this flagship BenQ model is anything to go by. While conventional beamers require room to project, UST models are far more versatile, and with the V6050, BenQ has produced a premium cinema solution able to turn practically any space into a jaw-dropping 4K theatre.

It's easy to see why some people think lasers are the future of projection. They can go exceptionally bright and can support an extended colour gamut. You don't have to replace them as you do normal projection lamps, and they're energy efficient. And they lose relatively little performance over their colossal lifetime.

Much as we love projectors, trying to use them in a dark room can be a pain. Particularly if their remote controls don't have any backlighting.

JVC's D-ILA home cinema projectors have almost always been brilliant. What they haven't typically been up to recently, though, is natively 4K – and its first native 4K home cinema model was the £35,000 Z1 laser PJ, which I'm almost certain you didn't buy. More affordable models long relied on proprietary e-Shift technology to deliver a pseudo 4K effect by passing HD images through two fractionally offset 1080p imaging chips.

Able to cast a big image in a relatively small room, positioned just centimetres from a white wall, it's not difficult to see the appeal of an ultra-short-throw (UST) projector. There's no fear of walking in front of the beam either, causing oversized shadows on the action. The downside is that almost all UST projectors look like escapees from the office Christmas party.