YABER Y30 Native 1080P Projector Full HD Video Projector 1920 x 1080, ±50° 4D Keystone Correction Support 4k & Zoom,LCD LED Home Theater Projector Compatible with Phone,PC,TV Box,PS4

I rarely submit reviews, but my recent experience with this Yaber Y30 projector was significant enough that I want to share it with others. Section 1 - Background and Selection I am a professional electrical engineer and long time home cinema enthusiast. I am highly experienced configuring home theater systems for family, friends, and clients of my creative services business.Of particular recent interest is the increasing number of folks who already have a relatively high end home system (or two) and want a budget level big screen casual viewing experience for outdoor gatherings, club meetings, children’s rooms, etc.I’m a good example of this circumstance. I have a well established home theatre setup in my home centered around a 70” 4K, HDR flat panel display, but I wanted to configure and install an occasional use, low budget, larger screen home theatre system in my 40’x40’ garage.Despite the low budget, it had to be well across the line of acceptable brightness and visual quality to entertain discerning viewers.I already had a budget 5.1 channel home theatre receiver, 100” pull down screen, ceiling mount, good video sources, and all the surround speakers on hand. All that remained was to choose a projector.I decided that my budget for the projectors would be limited to under $300 for a 1080p native projector with at least 1500 lumens brightness.I already owned a couple recent vintage 720p incandescent bulb projectors from Viewsonic and Epson that I used for business presentations. Even though the projectors cost between $350-$500 on sale, I found the images to be totally unacceptable for entertainment viewing, even in a totally dark room due to lack of resolution, brightness, and contrast.I tend to keep up with the technology and I already knew I would only consider LED projectors to take advantage of the long service life, potentially lower fan noise, and advancing display quality, particularly 1080p native capability. CAUTION! Many vendors play fast & loose with input resolution capability versus actual native display output. A projector calming HD or 4K compatibility may only be 720p (or lower) actual native display output.I quickly narrowed my search down to a handful of candidate projectors from Vankyo, Apeman, Goodee, and Yaber.After extensively reading online user reviews and viewing far too many YouTube videos about the candidate projectors, I ultimately selected the Yaber Y30 because it met my required specs and it’s consistently positive reviews, good customer service reports, and the availability of the $50 discount coupon on Amazon. I ended up paying $238 delivered. I recall just a couple years ago it was hard to find any 1080p HD projector for under $500. Needless to say that despite the good reviews I had low expectations for the Yaber Y30. But what the heck, Amazon has a great, no risk return policy. : ) Section 2 - Physical Mounting I had no problems removing the rubber feet to access the ceiling mount attachment holes and I located the projector at the ideal 3 meter distance and around 18" above center from the 100” screen. I ended up increasing the distance a bit to totally fill the screen edge to edge as the digital zoom controls only reduce the image. I had no issues using the keystone correction to fine tune the image to the screen and I used no zoom adjustment whatsoever. Section 3 - Startup and Configuration I had all my components pre-installed - a 4th generation HD Apple TV, a Roku 4K, and a 1080p DVD player, all going into HDMI inputs on a budget Dolby 5.1 Dolby surround receiver. The receiver HDMI out goes to HDMI 1 on the Yaber Y30.Many online reviews seemed somewhat put off by the manual focus. I was not. I liked the smooth and precise rotation of the lens. I had no problem with the manual focusing.I also had no problem with the remote control battery installation. Some reviews stated they could not figure out how to open the remote. There is even a YouTube video explaining this. On my remote Yaber had left one of the snaps “un-snapped” so it was visually clear how to split the seam and open it. A clever solution.I use the Joe Kane series of Home Theatre calibration DVD’s and created a User Picture configuration somewhere between the built in Standard (which I felt was too dark and crushed the blacks) and Dynamic (which totally washed out the whites). The resultant pluge pattern, though far from “perfect”, was totally acceptable in a fully darkened room and even held up with some dim lighting well to the rear of the projector. The screen alignment, focus, and sharpness test patterns were very acceptable after adjustment.I found the Yaber remote to be simple and straightforward to use, though somewhat limited in the level of adjustments available to the advanced user. You can tweak the brightness, contrast, and color saturation of the image and that’s about it. For some reason the Tint adjustment was greyed out. Most people would be satisfied with the built in settings based upon the source material and room lighting.Once I satisfied myself that I could not tweak the image any further, I invited some friends over whom I knew were home theatre enthusiasts and had a good eye when it came to projectors. Section 4 - Viewing Experience I have to state that despite my thorough reading of many dozens of favorable user reviews, I had low expectations going into my viewing tests of the Y30. My 720p bulb projectors were completely unsatisfactory for serious big screen viewing despite being from major brand names and costing hundreds more. Other mini LED projectors I had seen over recent years were interesting, but still fell short of anything I would be willing to view content on.I used some Joe Kane HD DVD video demos, Apple TV+ material, and the Big Buck Bunny and Jacob + Katie Schwarz Costa Rica YouTube videos as critical source material.In general, myself and my friends were favorably impressed with the video performance of the Yaber Y30 - and we are not easily impressed. Watching animated content was particularly impressive and the Apple TV Arcade gaming experience was very good.The image is noticeably brighter in the center than at the surrounding edges and there is a bit of loss of focus at the edges as well, but these well known aberrations of “budget” projectors were far less pronounced on the Y30, quite negligible in fact during normal, non-test pattern viewing.Overall, brightness and contrast had an unexpected level of “punch” with high quality source material, even evoking a few “wows!’ from my friends. Would I like it to be a bit brighter? Sure. But once I tweaked the factory built in settings it was surprisingly good.As expected, the video impact is best in a totally dark room, but we really had no problem having a dimly lit serving area on a table behind us without degrading the viewing experience. This is critical as folks need to have some light to navigate around a room safely, grab a beverage and snacks, and get back to their seats comfortably.As Dolby 5.1 surround was provided by the receiver, no attempt was made to judge the quality of the built in speakers. However, we took careful note of the fan noise, including at the High setting, and found it to be completely satisfactory, even in quiet movie sequences.Section 5 - Final Conclusions 1. The Yaber Y30 provides a more than adequate, visually impressive, enjoyable viewing experience, even in a dimly lit room. 2. The Yaber Y30 is easy to setup and simple to use. They keystone correction was excellent. 3. Fan noise at the highest setting is not intrusive or objectionable. 4. The Yaber Y30 has a “quality” look and feel to it. 5. I was impressed with the lens quality, size, and ease of focusing. There was nothing “cheap” about it. 6. Even at full list price, the Yaber Y30 is an exception value. You would be hard pressed to find a better bang for your buck.

1-month review.Per the price tag, this is a budget $200-225 generic projector. That said, there looks to be 1000's of entries in this weight class. My projector application is ceiling mounted in a garage which we've converted into our in-home gym during quarantine. Projector needs to be bright enough to handle some usage during dusk hours with the garage open and daytime hours with the garage closed despite ambient light from windows along the top of our garage door. Night time any/all projectors should work. It's the ability to work with ambient light that I care about.I am not picky about video quality; 1080P is the minimum. Primary source is a TCL Alto 8+ Soundbar with built-in FireTV so the projector audio has never been used.Based on reviews, decided to replace my another budget (lightning deal) projector, the GooDee BL98 with this YABER Y30 model. Both models are in the $200-225 range. The GooDee had pretty terrible, washed out colors with a clear lack of brightness in my application. The Yaber was significantly better across the board. Best part is that the FireTV remote can control the Yaber project power on/off so I could ditch the Yaber remote entirely. The Yaber is the rare projector with both vertical and horizontal keystones making it more accommodating for different throw environments.Lux vs LumensName brand projectors all advertise lumens as it is the total output of visible light from a light source making for easy comparison between products. It's how you compare all light bulbs! The generic projectors choose to report lux as a way to confuse consumers. Lux is the amount of light that is cast on a surface and is dependent on the distance and angle from the bulb to the surface. Never do the generic projectors tell you the distance and angle they're using to calculate the lux of their product. Moreover, the consumer's application will undoubtedly vary from the manufacturer's chosen angle/distance. Thus, the generic manufacturer chooses an arbitrary angle/distance so that they can report much higher lux values giving the appearance that their projectors are in the same class as their competitors / more expensive projectors.As an example, they could decide to throw at 1m (3 ft) away from the screen, dead center on a tripod and report 15,000 lux. Is that better than a 4,000 lumens projector? Probably not! Is it useful? Nope, nobody sets their projector up like this. Does let me report a big number for my product and do consumers like big numbers so they buy more of my product? Yes, they do.tldr;lux is a joke.Since lumens isn't provided, the only real test is to get it, mount it, and see for yourself.Return it if it's not to your liking and punish these manufacturers for providing fake brightness metrics.Yaber Y30 advertises as 7200 L which is in lux. The GooDee BL98 used to have 6800 lux on its product page but that's been replaced with 1 candela lux (LoL). My original garage projector was the Anker Nebula Mars II which is rated at 300 lumens. This was not good enough unless it was the darkest of nights. The GooDee is probably 2x that but with poor picture quality. The Yaber is likely 2.5 - 3.0x the Anker with decent picture quality. My living room name brand projector (Optoma HD39HDR) is rated at 4000 lumens and would blow away all of these garage projectors but at 4x the cost.Because I was able to try an inferior model in this same price class, the Yaber looks like a champion and a keeper at this price point. Your mileage may vary.