review

Vivibright F30 Native 1080p LED LCD Image Projector

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Getting a decent budget projector used to be a bit of a hit and miss, but not anymore! With offerings like the Vivibright F30, one can now get the full movie experience you've always wanted at a decent price and without sacrificing color accuracy and brightness.
The Vivibright F30 projector has a sleek Xbox-like design and a solid foundation, including useful features like vertical keystone and focus adjustment, as well as the ability to mirror and rotate the image of the projector from the settings.
On the back of the Vivibright F30 projector, you find three connection options, including two USB 2.0 plug and play ports for paying content off of a USB flash drive, one HDMI input to connect devices like an Apple TV, an Amazon Firestick or a Roky stick, and an S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) audio out to connect an external speaker (no S/PDIF cable is included).
The F30 projector also features, on the back of it, a dedicated power switch button, a 3-pin power port (3-pin power cord included), nine user control buttons for navigating through the Vivibright F30 menus and settings.
The control buttons are tactile and clicky and include enter, source, power, left/right navigation, up/down navigation, menu and back.
The settings menus include OSD language, PictureMode, Color Temperature, AspectRatio, Reduce Display size, Sound mode, Surround sound, sPDIF mode and Flip so you can change the orientation of the image from top-to-bottom and/or left-to-right
Aspect Ratio can be set to auto, Just Scan, 4:3 or 16:9. Surround sound can be turned off or set to standard Surround or SRSTruSurroundXT, which increases the volume while enhancing the bass an treble.
There is also an infrared (IR) receiver on the back of the unit for the included IR remote, and a 3.5mm audio jack for connecting an external speaker.
Being able to add an external speaker to the F30 projector is neat although you probably won't need to because the built-in stereo speakers in the F30 projector are really loud. The overall sound quality is also good, which is surprising considering the price of the Vivibright F30 speaker. 
It's worth mentioning that once you connect an external speaker, it mutes the F30 internal speakers so, you cannot get dual speaker functionality, which would have been an added bonus.
On the right side of the Vivibright F30, you find the two rubber wheels with rubber spikes for vertical keystone correction and focus adjustment. It's neat that you can manually adjust the sharpness and vertical orientation of the image but the wheels are not as convenient to use as a slider mechanism, which you easily slide from left to right. With the Vivibright F30, you have to hold down the projector while keystoning and adjusting the focus.
plenty of ventilation on the sides for cooling
On the front of the projector, you find another IR receiver and the 3-inch diameter lens (with cover) which outputs to 1080p native resolution, meaning the F30 projector has a natural 1080p resolution without upscaling or downscaling.
A 720p projector can output 1080p but it has to enlarge the image, which degrades the image quality. The F30 does support lower resolutions including 1080i, 720p, 575i, 480i, 575p and 480p.
On the bottom of the F30 projector, you find rubber feet, four threaded mounting holes for mounting the projector on a ceiling projector mount (not included) and a small retractable front stand to raise the angle of the lens.
weighs 2.8Kg 
The quality of the projection image is very good in the dark, thanks to approximately 3800 lumens of brightness; however, the F30 only has an ANSI lumen rating of 360 lumens, meaning the F30 projector is not great in full daylight but good enough with just a bit of ambient light coming through drawn curtains.
If you can't make the room as dark as possible, you can always try projecting the image closer to the projection screen to make image appear brighter.
the F30 measures 30cm long, 24cm wide and 10cm tall
The F30 has a dynamic contrast ratio of 15,000:1, which is much higher than the average contrast ratio of a computer display (about 1000:1), but nowhere close to the 4,000,000:1 contrast ratio of a plasma display.
Setting up the projector between 100-inches and 120-inches from the screen works great, though you also have to keep in mind that the corners of the projected image appear slightly out of focus the longer the distance.
The slight distortion on the corners of the projected image isn't an issue when watching movies but might be an issue when playing games that display in-game info on the corners like minimaps.
Saying this, you can remedy the corner distortion by making the center of the projection not as sharp and bringing the projector closer or, of course, you could use the built-in Reduce Display' function, which works similarly to the zoom functionality of some projectors.

horizontal frequency 15-102kHz/ vertical scan rate 23-120kHz
The Vivibright F30 projector uses a 130W LED lamp, as well as a 5.8-inch LCD projection panel; hence you can expect LCD degradation (or screen burn-in) where the image develops discoloration after a certain amount of lamp hours. The good news is that the F30 LED lamp is rated at a massive 50,000 lamp hours. You can buy it from Amazon.

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