Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
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There’s just something insanely better, in theory at least, about being able to play your games on a screen the size of your wall. If we are PC gaming we tend, well most of us, to play them on monitors that maybe are incapable of bringing the best out of the visuals on screens more suited to web-browsing or Microsoft Word. Even if we have splurged on a great gaming monitor, size is a factor as the price ratchets up very quickly.
Console gamers might be playing their games on bigger TVs, but again, unless you are paying out, lag and size, even if you have a modern 4K hanging on the wall, will be limited to where you could be with projection.
The problem with projection for gaming so far has been performance. It sounds great, get yourself one of the more recent self-styled “lifestyle” projectors from Amazon and excitedly wait for it to turn up, before probably sending it back disappointed. Colors don’t pop, you can only play in the dead of night and there’s a lag to boot. It’s been difficult to game on a projector without spending a fortune. That could well have just changed.
A new company, well brand at least – Valerion – has been prepping a Kickstarter for a new range of four projectors that on paper at least, give the more expensive competition something to think about, and potentially, for the price of a good TV or monitor, change the game for gaming.
Having reached out to us, Valerian sent us a pre-production model to take a look at and put through its paces for a few weeks. I’ve been playing with it for that time and have now come to the conclusion that gaming projectors could be ready for the main stage finally.
Four choices
The model we are looking at here is the Visionmaster Plus 2, which is kind of the middle ground for what this new company is offering. Here’s a link to a comparison of all four models but it is the $2499 Plus 2 we have on the desk.
As with a lot of these things that MSRP is a little sketchy as you can pick it up for just $1299 if you pop a deposit down on the Kickstarter. Let’s get this out of the way right now. The Visionmaster Plus 2 is well worth that cash outlay if you have ever thought about going down the projector route, not just for gaming but for movie watching as well.
Hard Case
The Plus 2 comes in a hard foam case which I initially thought was packaging and had pulled it off wrong and broke the hinge before realizing it has handles and clasps and is meant as a long-term storage solution for the machine. That will teach me to get excited. The next thing you notice is just how heavy the machine is. This is, in part, down to the design which features pioneering design featuring 14 electroplated metal strips, engineered to endure up to 100 kilograms of pressure. This thing feels like it could survive the bomb and still keep playing Grand Theft Auto while you melt away.
There is a fixing for a ceiling mount on the bottom and Valerion is promising both a ceiling mount and a tripod as purchasable accessories on its website, but I would get a joiner to come and fit the mount to a joist rather than doing it myself. I would not want this falling on my head.
Anyway, I had neither of these things so onto the coffee table it went.
The projector unit
The Valerion projectors, unlike those from sister company AWOL Vision which produces some great short-throw units, are all long-throw projectors which will definitely affect how you use it. For console gaming, it is fantastic as it can just sit on the table in front of you and throw the image (up to 300 inches depending on how far away you place it onto your screen or white/grey wall.
Realistically though, most people will use the projector with a screen size of around 100-120 inches. It’s nice it can do a lot more but you will need a bigger space to get anywhere close to the maximum size out of it and you would need to ceiling mount it at the back of your room or you would be too far away from the screen to play comfortably. Besides, 120 inches is probably twice the size of the TV you play on if not more.
The machine itself is 4K too which is better for movies than gaming unless you have a beast of a GPU, although even with slightly increased lag at 4K you can still play fine, just if you are a massive Call of Duty nerd and need something to blame your losses on, you can hide behind this.
The Plus 2’s 4ms input lag at 1080P at 240Hz on a 21:9 or 32:9 ultra-wide screen is a true vision to behold. The colors pop beautifully and the blacks are enhanced/darkened by Valerion’s own proprietary technology built into the box.
I set up a racing stand and popped some Moza Racing gear on it, placed the projector in front, and started whizzing around the track in Rennsport and it looked absolutely superb at that size. I prefer racing in virtual reality but this was immersive in a totally different way. Next up I played Satisfactory and seeing my planet-sized factories burst to life far more than they do out of my humble 34” gaming monitor brought a smile to my face.
In terms of lag, Valerion lists performance as 4ms at 1080P@240Hz, 8ms at 1080P@120Hz, and 15ms at 4K @60Hz. Depending on the game you are playing this is great. Obviously it will matter less on a wall-sized Civilization map than it will playing Apex Legends.
The Plus 2 comes with four modes for gaming, an RPG mode, Racing mode, SPG mode, and FPS mode. The changes between each are subtle but effective. RPG mode for example will crank up the base on the audio while FPS mode pushes a bit more power to the blacks for those shadowy experiences.
Valerion Visionmaster Plus 2 – other features
Up until now we have only really talked about using the Plus 2 for gaming but it is much more than that. As a lifestyle projector, it has Google TV and Google voice assistant baked in. You can turn off the microphone that listens for your commands via a switch on top that initially confused me as I thought it was the on/off switch for the Projector itself. That’s what the manual is for.
With this built in you can simply sign into your services like Prime Video and Netflix and stream directly without connecting anything to the unit. If you do want to connect devices however there are three HDMI ports, two USB and an ethernet port meaning you should be able to push content to it from virtually anything you have in your house. If all else fails you can even cast to it from your phone.
Audio
I remember my first projector about 10 years ago and the audio was terrible and off-puttingly bad as it meant that to game on it I needed to wire in separate speakers. The Plus 2’s audio is actually really good. The base is heavy and games and movies sound great from the box’s two 12W built-in speakers. There is an eARC, optical and line out for audio as well so you still can connect it to your home theater system, but when I just want to get it out of its broken box and plop it on the table to play games I can do so with minimum fuss
The Remote
The remote control was my only bugbear with the system as it didn’t work properly. It did however have a massive sticker on it saying “engineering sample” and I reached out to Valerion who told me that the remote was still being worked on. Me being me I took a screwdriver to it and opened it up to find out why one of the buttons was thinking it was being pressed when it wasn’t, but there was nothing obvious and it continued to fail even after a clean and rebuild. I ended up just using the Google remote on my iPhone though, and you won’t have that problem anyway when the retail units arrive before the end of the year.
Conclusion
I set out to look at the Plus 2 as a normal person who wanted a projector to play games on would do. Measuring contrast levels and color saturation is not what most people do. They want to plug in a PlayStation or Xbox, boot everything up, and go wow and that’s what the Plus 2 gives you. A wow feeling. It looks amazing, both as a unit and the light it cannons out the front via its advanced RGB triple laser setup onto your wall, even when the room is well-lit which is something I was not expecting.
A projector for gaming is not a throwaway purchase but now Valerion has managed to get this much high-end tech into a box of a similar price to a decent TV is astounding. Add to the fact just how well-engineered that box is and you can’t go wrong, This may be the first time you are hearing of the company but it is not going to be the last.
You can check out the Kickstarter and the backers deal here. Units are expected to ship in December this year.
Valerion Visionmaster Plus 2 in numbers
| Specification | Plus 2 |
|---|---|
| Deposit Price | $1299 |
| Super Early Bird Price | $1499 |
| MSRP | $2499 |
| Delivery Time | Dec 2024 |
| Brightness (ISO Lumen) | 2000 |
| OpticFlex Lens System | Fixed 1.2:1 TR |
| Vertical Lens Shifting | — |
| Dynamic IRIS | — |
| Viewing Contrast | 10000:1 |
| Native Contrast | 3000:1 |
| Light Source | RGB Laser 110% REC 2020 |
| Resolution & Size | 4K UHD up to 300″ |
| Audio Format | 2X12W built-in speakers |
| AI-SoC Chipset | MT9618 |
| Memory | 4G RAM/128G ROM |
| Input Lag Latency | 4ms at 1080P@240Hz, 8ms at 1080P@120Hz, 15ms at 4K@60Hz |
| Film Formats | Dolby Vision, Active3D, 24FPS & 48FPS |
| Wireless Streaming | Airplay 2, Chromacast, Miracast |
| Smart Home | Works with Google Home, Works with Apple Homekit, Device control with Alexa, Control 4 |
The post The Valerion Visionmaster Plus 2 smart projector will change how you play games – if you have the space for it appeared first on ReadWrite.
