Guide to Brightness

Brightness is measured in ANSI lumens which refers to the American National Standards Institute who devised formula. However, it is important to bear in mind that it is only a guide and two projectors of 1500 lumens may not be exactly the same brightness

Application to projectors

There are 3 main considerations to bear in mind when evaluating brightness.

Ambient light is the greatest consideration. If you're on the move and don't know what level of ambient light you're likely to encounter when you set up your projector, opt for a high brightness projector (1500 - 2500 ANSI lumens).

Screen size. The bigger the image you're projecting, the less concentrated your projector's brightness is going to be across the screen. An average screen size is about 180cm wide which in an average lit room would work perfectly well with around 2000 ANSI lumens. If you start going bigger than that or there are lots of windows, consider upping your brightness accordingly.

Subject matter. If you're projecting detailed, intricate work then it's important that everyone can see the details, so buying a high brightness projector helps there. However, if you're just projecting large, bold words then it isn'tas much of a priority

Projector Guide - Contents

Overview
Resolution
Brightness
Warranty advice
Choosing a Screen
Spare lamps
DLP vs LCD

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Home cinema projectors

Brightness isn't as important for home cinema, which is why there are very few quality home cinema projectors over 1200 lumens on the assumption that most of the time projection will be in the dark or subdued lighting. Therefore it is more important to prevent as much ambient light as possible from hitting the screen surface, and get a specialist home cinema projector with high contrast and a good video processing chip.

It is also worth noting at this point, obvious as it may seem, that a projector cannot project black. Consequently, the brightness (or lack of) that you see on the screen with nothing projected on it is the darkest black you could possibly get from a projector.

There are various solutions to this and the main one is the choice of screen as a "cinema grey" fabric will improve the contrast of the image and therefopre give you better definition between blacks and other dark colours.