Vankyo Performance H500RB Review: One Wall, No TV
A 1080p projector with Roku already inside it, auto-focus that takes about three seconds, and a 150-inch picture on a bedroom wall. I put it between two doors where a TV was never going to fit, then took it outside and put a film on the side of the house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaY-ekr3aOs
THE VERDICT
The wall between the two doors in my bedroom is a big, useless piece of wall. It is too narrow for the TV I kept nearly buying, and mounting anything there means cables down the plaster and a bracket I would have to patch when we move. The H500RB sidesteps the whole problem. It is a 1080p projector with Roku already inside it, so there is no stick, no second remote and no extra power cable, and it focuses and squares itself off in about three seconds from wherever you set it down. What you get is a picture up to 150 inches that you can take outside and put on the side of the house when the kids want a film in the garden. The honest limit is brightness: 330 ANSI lumens is a dark-room number, and in a bright room it will look washed out. Accept that and it is a lot of screen for the money.
Adding a television to a room usually costs you a wall. You give up the space, you give up the look of it, and you inherit a tangle of cables that you then spend a weekend hiding. In my bedroom the only sensible spot is the stretch of wall between two doors, and it is exactly the wrong shape for a TV.
So the projector was not a gadget I was curious about. It was the answer to a piece of wall I had already given up on.
Roku is already inside it
This is the part that changes the daily experience rather than the spec sheet. The H500RB runs Roku TV as its operating system, which means the apps are on the projector itself. There is no streaming stick hanging off the back, no second power cable feeding it, and no second remote on the nightstand. The remote that comes in the box has Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and Apple TV buttons on it, and everything else installs from the Roku store.
If you have ever set up a projector for a relative and then had to explain which input the stick is on, you already understand why this matters more than it sounds.
Setup is genuinely a few seconds
Auto-focus and auto-keystone are the two features that decide whether a projector gets used or gets put back in the cupboard. Point this one at a wall from an angle and it works out the distance, sharpens the image and squares off the trapezoid on its own. It took about three seconds in my room, and it repeated that every time I moved it.
It will correct horizontally as well as vertically, so you are not restricted to setting it dead square in front of the wall. In practice that means you can put it on whatever surface is free rather than the surface the projector demands.
The bedroom wall test
I set it up against that awkward wall between the two doors with the nightstand lamp still on. Even with the lamp burning, the picture was clearly watchable. Turning the lamp off is where it stops being a projector you are making allowances for and starts being a screen: a big, sharp 1080p image across a span of wall that a television was never going to fill.
The wall stopped being a compromise and started being the biggest screen in the house.
Vankyo rates the projection size from 40 inches up to 150 inches, and the sweet spot in a normal room sits at the upper end of that. At 150 inches the image was still crisp. The trade-off is the one every budget projector makes, and it is worth being blunt about it, so it has its own section below.
And then outside
The part my kids cared about had nothing to do with specifications. We carried it into the garden and put a film on the side of the house. It weighs four pounds and comes with a carrying case, so moving it outside is a one-trip job, and the auto-keystone dealt with the fact that I had it sat on a garden table at an angle to the siding.
Watching a film projected on the side of your own house, at dusk, with everyone sat outside, is the sort of thing that makes a device earn its shelf space. It is also the use case I would point to if you are on the fence, because no television does it at all.
Sound, and what to do when it is not enough
There are two 5W speakers with Dolby Audio on board, and for a bedroom or a medium-sized room they are fine on their own. That is a genuinely useful thing in a portable projector, because it means the garden setup does not also require you to carry a speaker and find somewhere to plug it in.
For anything bigger, it has two-way Bluetooth 5.2, so a soundbar or a pair of Bluetooth speakers pairs directly. You can also send the audio to headphones, which is the option that matters if you are watching late and somebody else in the house is asleep.
The sealed optical engine is not a marketing line
The lens assembly is sealed against dust. This sounds like filler until you have owned a cheap projector for two years and watched dark blotches creep into the image as particles settle inside the light path. Once that happens there is no fixing it without opening the unit.
On a budget projector that people expect to keep for years, a sealed engine is one of the few features that protects the thing you actually bought, which is the picture.
Specifications
Native resolution 1920 x 1080
Input support accepts 4K, outputs 1080p
Brightness 330 ANSI lumens
Contrast 1500:1
Projection size 40 in - 150 in
Throw ratio 1.23:1 at 60 in
Throw distance 1.1 m - 3.3 m (3.6 - 10.8 ft)
Display type TFT LCD
Operating system Roku TV built in
Focus and keystone automatic, plus electric and manual
Speakers 2 x 5W, Dolby Audio
Bluetooth two-way, Bluetooth 5.2
Wi-Fi dual band 2.4G / 5G
Ports HDMI 1.4 x1, USB 2.0 x1
Noise under 32 dB at 1 m
Weight 4 lbs (1.83 kg)
Dimensions 4.6 x 7.4 x 7.8 in
What I liked
✦ Roku TV is built in, so there is no stick, no extra cable and no second remote
✦ Auto-focus and auto-keystone that work in about three seconds, every time you move it
✦ A sharp 1080p picture at up to 150 inches in a dark room
✦ Four pounds and a carrying case, so taking it outside is genuinely easy
✦ Onboard Dolby Audio speakers that are good enough to use on their own
✦ Sealed optical engine, which keeps dust out of the light path
What I would change
✦ 330 ANSI lumens is a dark-room figure. In a bright room the image washes out
✦ There is no optical zoom, so resizing the picture means physically moving the projector
✦ It accepts a 4K signal but outputs 1080p, so it is not a 4K projector
So should you buy it?
Buy it if you have a wall and no good place for a TV
That is the case it is built for. An awkward stretch of wall, a rented room you cannot drill, a bedroom where the television would dominate everything. You get a far bigger picture than the equivalent TV money buys, and when you move out it goes in a bag.
Buy it if the projector needs to work for people who are not you
The Roku interface is the reason. Anybody who has used a Roku TV can pick up the remote and find what they want, which is not something you can say about a projector with a streaming stick bolted to the back of it.
Skip it if your room is bright
No amount of enthusiasm fixes 330 ANSI lumens in a sunlit lounge. If the room you have in mind has big windows and no blinds, this is the wrong product and you should spend more on brightness rather than be disappointed by this one.
Price
At the time of testing the Performance H500RB is $199.99 direct from Vankyo. Target lists the bundle with the carrying case at $249.99, though it has been discounted below that, so it is worth comparing both before you order. Prices on this kind of product move constantly.