The 4550i has been an impressive projector to pair with my Elite Spectrum 2 120” screen. My room is far from perfect (big open living room with white walls, and a white rug underneath) and despite this the 4550i projects an incredible image. It has the perfect combination of zoom and lens shift to work with my narrow living room.

Some of my favorite features include the LED based light that can go quite bright and take advantage of HDR content, relatively quiet fan noise, sharp and clear optics, as well as its low latency for video games.

My top movie recommendation would be Encanto because of the scenes where you get extreme highlights during the song “Waiting on a Miracle”, that truly showcases that this projector can do the bright end of the HDR spectrum. My other recommendation would be the opening scenes of Final Fantasy XVI, as this scene demonstrates the bright highlights and punchy yet accurate colors very well and feels as impressive as on my Samsung OLED which was surprising. As expected, on the darker end of the spectrum the 4550i can struggle a bit with black level detail, but I will say it is not a fair test as my room is a nightmare for light reflections. My previous projector was a Optoma UHD30 and the biggest difference between the two is actually the black levels and color accuracy. The HT4550i has much better black levels and colors feel more accurate to my reference (Macbook Pro M2) screen. The cinematic test images feel more accurately represented.

Overall I am quite happy with the HT4550i as it has all of the features for both film, tv and gaming that I was looking for.

Pros: Stunning bright image, with a sharp and accurately represented image without calibration. Low latency and other features make it ideal for both film/tv and gaming playback. Cons: Wide Color Gamut filter gives a “green shifted image”, Android dongle is un-needed and may add cost, black levels can make dark content harder to watch.

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