Does HDR make a difference on a projector?

Accepting an HDR signal and displaying high dynamic range are two different claims, and a projector listing usually only makes the first.

What HDR asks of a display

A much larger gap between the darkest and brightest parts of an image than standard dynamic range, and peak highlights well above the average picture level. Televisions achieve it by driving small areas of the panel very hard. A projector puts a fixed amount of light through a lens onto a passive surface, and cannot brighten one part of the image without the rest.

What projectors do instead

Tone mapping: compressing the HDR range into what the machine can actually produce. Done well, the result is a picture with more convincing highlights than the standard version. Done poorly, it is a dark, muddy image, which is where the common advice to “turn HDR off” comes from.

What to read on the specification

Which HDR formats are supported, stated individually — HDR10, HLG, HDR10+, Dolby Vision — because each is a separate licence. A machine that lists one is not deficient; it has told you which one.

The honest summary

HDR support on a projector is worth having and is not transformative in the way it is on a bright television. The specifications that change the picture more, in this category, remain brightness, native contrast and the room.

This does not replace the manufacturer's own instructions. Every brightness figure, contrast ratio, power rating and load capacity on this page is reported from the manufacturer's own documentation, with its unit written as published, and named as such — none of it is measured here. A brightness figure that is not expressed in ANSI or ISO lumens is reported as the manufacturer expressed it and is never converted, because no conversion exists.