The Optoma CinemaX P2 isn’t a flawless performer, but nor does it do anything to really give away the fact that it’s the cheapest home entertainment-focused UST projector in town.
The first thing that caught my eye was how crisp and detailed it looks when playing native 4K pictures. Suspicious though we always are about any technology that claims to be 4K when it doesn’t carry an absolutely clear cut native pixel count of 3840x2160, it really would feel harsh to describe the CinemaX P2’s pictures as anything other than 4K. Certainly there’s more texture, smooth edging and depth on show than you could expect to get with even the best full HD projectors.
... it really would feel harsh to describe the CinemaX P2’s pictures as anything other than 4K
The 4K sharpness feels natural, too, rather than like the result of any sort of aggressive picture processing.The sharpness doesn’t reduce significantly, either, when there’s motion in an image, even without using the provided motion processing system. Actually, we’d recommend against this system as it tends to cause some quite marked stuttering that’s more distracting than anything the projector’s native judder might cause.
Another important string to the CinemaX P2’s bow is its brightness. While it perhaps doesn’t quite live up to its 3000 lumens max light output claims, its images are certainly bright enough (we measured 39 foot lamberts on a zero gain screen using its nicely configured default HDR modes) to either look punchy with HDR in a dark room, or put up a decent fight against the ambient light of a fairly bright room.
If you’re consistently going to be watching the CinemaX P2 in a bright room you should perhaps consider firing it on to a screen with a bit of gain to it, or one that boasts good ambient light rejecting properties (provided you’re confident any such screen you buy won’t generate a significant light ‘hot spot’). While it’s perhaps not quite bright enough to feel totally like a TV, though, the CinemaX P2 is always watchable in pretty much anything except direct intense sunlight. And with the lights down, it really can kick out some fearsome punch.
Bright UST projectors don’t tend to impress much when it comes to contrast; they’re more focused, understandably, on being bright enough to cut through ambient light. Ambient light which, of course, inevitably makes dark parts of the picture look washed out anyway. The CinemaX P2’s contrast, though, really isn’t bad at all by general UST standards - especially when it comes to maintaining credible black levels in dark rooms on movie nights.
... with the lights down, it really can kick out some fearsome punch
Very dark shots can, to be clear, suffer with an obvious grey wash. The more balanced content that makes up the vast majority of your TV or movie viewing time, though, containing a mix of light and dark content, looks decently convincing and dynamic. And I never felt even during the very darkest scenes as if the black level limitations were bad enough to make dark scenes feel flat and unbelievable. Especially as the P2 manages to deliver really impressive amounts of shadowy, low-level detailing in even the darkest corners, ensuring that dark scenes look as deep and three-dimensional as bright ones.
While the CinemaX P2 isn’t the most satisfying colour performer, as we’ll see in a moment, it does do an excellent job in conjunction with its extreme sharpness of delivering a sense of even the subtlest of colour tone shifts and blends. So shots of dense foliage or woodland, for instance, benefit from leaves that actually look properly, individually defined rather than like some mushy green blob. This ability to render subtle colour differences helps with skin tones, too, helping faces avoid both the plasticky ‘mannequin’ effect and the coarse, ‘compressed colour’ issue that we’ve seen on less able UST projectors (and TVs).
Colour is also the CinemaX P2’s biggest weakness, though. The projector doesn’t seem to have quite enough colour range to keep pace with its brightness, meaning that some HDR tones - especially in particularly bright areas - can look slightly washed out. Strangely you kind of acclimatise to this over time, though, and it doesn’t feel as much of a problem when you’re watching the CinemaX P2 in a relatively bright environment. The CinemaX P2’s colours are also much more accurate with SDR content.
... some HDR tones - especially in particularly bright areas - can look slightly washed out
For these reasons the slightly wan colours with HDR shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a deal breaker in the context of everything the CinemaX P2 gets right.
Other smaller picture niggles are: occasional appearances of DLP’s rainbow effect, where stripes of pure red, green and blue appear over small stand out bright objects; slight softness in the image’s top corners; an occasional double-image glitch while gaming; and some rather odd picture set up choices for the Game preset. The latter, though, at least, can be improved by manually adjusting the preset - especially by adding more brightness.
In fact, the CinemaX P2’s pictures are never less than enjoyable, and certainly better than you might have expected for its money.
The good news continues with its sound, too, which achieves much more scale, detail and power than you’d imagine possible from the speakers’ compact enclosure.
The fact that the speakers face directly towards you helps their sound appear impressively direct and impactful, and while Optoma’s claims of an omnidirectional audio delivery prove as fanciful as expected, the soundstage the P2 produces is actually impressively large. It spreads far beyond the projector’s bodywork to create a well-crafted wall of sound that’s actually big enough to keep the projector’s 120-inch images appropriately epic company.
This wall of sound includes some height as well as width, and while the CinemaX P2 doesn’t really attempt any Dolby Atmos-style height effects (it doesn’t actually have Dolby Atmos decoding, don’t forget), it does seem to lift dialogue a little so that it sounds better connected to the epically proportioned onscreen action.
... CinemaX P2’s pictures are never less than enjoyable
Dialogue sounds well rounded and clean, too, even when there’s a dense movie moment going on behind it, yet vocals always still sound part of that background sound rather than appearing unnaturally bright.
The CinemaX P2’s sound speakers are sensitive enough to produce plenty of detail from film soundtracks too, helping them sound busy and immersive.
While the CinemaX P2’s mid-range is pleasingly open and refined, really high treble sounds can hit your ear a bit harshly (especially if you push the volume beyond its 80 setting), while at the other end of the audio spectrum there isn’t enough bass extension to entirely convince you that a T-Rex is approaching or a massive alien space craft is flying by. These sorts of issues are common with sound systems built into TVs and especially projectors, though - and actually they typically sound much worse than they do on the CinemaX P2.
