When you are building a Home Golf Simulator or Commercial Golf Simulator at some point you will ask yourself, “what is the best golf simulator projector?” We are here to help guide you with the best information and everything you need to know when it comes to projectors for golf simulators. If you are looking for discounted pricing contact us anytime for BenQ, Optoma, Panasonic, and other brand pricing.
One of the most factors you need to consider are what format works best for your rooms size, 16:9, 16:10, or 4:3. This will depend on the size of your room because for instance if you can only fit a 12 foot wide golf simulator screen and you want an 8′ tall image that will not fit for a 16:9 resolution. You can easily figure out these dimensions and formats using the projector throw calculator at ProjectorCentral.com. This will also be a perfect time to figure out the throw ratio of your projector you are looking at.
Should you go with a 4k projector for your golf simulator? The answer is really up to you! As I mentioned above with 16:10 vs 16:9, this is really going to matter on your space and if you can fit the 4k image with a tall enough screen for your liking. 4k is excellent for sure but a projector like the new LU935ST proves that a WUXGA 1920×1200 high quality image is extremely close in quality and offers a lot of versatility, even the ability to have movie night at 1080p! But it can get even better with the latest model the BenQ LK936St which is a 4k Projector that can do 16:10 in a higher 2560×1600 WQXGA.
Let’s take a second to talk about throw ratio and why a short throw projector is most likely the best solution for your environment. With a golfer usually standing 10-12′ or even less to the screen you do not want to cast a shadow on your image. So if you choose a short throw projector like the BenQ LK953ST, BenQ LU935ST, or LK936ST these are paired with short throw lenses allowing you to get just over a 12′ wide images from only 10′ away from the screen. Take a look at our installation videos below for both of the BenQ short throw models to see how we installed them even off center to the room.
You will notice in the videos above these projectors have the ability for a very easy installation using lens shift, zoom, keystone correction, and other features. This makes for a fast easy installation of the projector in your golf simulator.
Next up is Lumens! What is a Lumen? The lumen (symbol: lm) is the SI derived unit of luminous flux, a measure of the total quantity of visible light emitted by a source per unit of time. Luminous flux differs from power (radiant flux) in that radiant flux includes all electromagnetic waves emitted, while luminous flux is weighted according to a model (a “luminosity function“) of the human eye’s sensitivity to various wavelengths. Lumens are related to lux in that one lux is one lumen per square metre. (Source: Wikipedia)
Why are lumens so important? Well projectors can’t produce a black! Ever wonder why most projector environments are so dark? That is because this is the best way to eliminate any light wash on your screen and give you the best image and contrast. The high the lumens, the better you projector can overcome any ambient light and will produce a bold image. A good starting point is about 3,000 lumens for most environments for a solid image. Then for higher-end brightness you can look in the 5,000-7,000 range and even move to a laser light vs normal bulb lit projector.
We should touch on something really quick when it comes to laser vs bulb projectors. Most of the new laser projectors including the BenQ models above are running Single chip DLP technology. This type of technology is great and offers better contrast vs 3LCD, but can causing flickering if a golf simulator swing camera is capturing high FPS facing the projector screen. So be sure to keep this in mind if you are planning on doing a lot of swing recording down the line.
So I think that cover the majority of what you need to know about choosing the best golf simulator projector for your home golf simulator or commercial golf simulator. As always I am here to help you get the best pricing on information for many brands of golf simulator projectors such as BenQ, Optoma, Panasonic, and more. Contact us today!
